(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.
The bear scenario is the perfect division inducing shitstorm.
It’s understandable what the memes portrays the danger that women face, daily. The fact that they frequently don’t feel comfortable or even just basic safety is definitely valid and worth discussion.
However, the bear vs man thing was just the worst vehicle to induce that discussion. On one side men who may not be the most well informed about women issues; will get immediately defensive at being compared to a large animal known for tearing people apart and eating them alive.
The members of the other side who see all the angry men getting defensive at them for expressing this view and think it’s purely because they aren’t empathetic to these issue, they “hate” women or they’re marginalising what is a real and daily danger.
Of course there are actual trolls, toxic arseholes and people who have 0 interest actual discourse or understanding but fuck them, I agree ban em.
It was never going to end in a productive, calm or rational discussion and frankly I think tarring the entire of lemmy for it is equally as unproductive. I’ve seen plenty of people initially aggressive to the meme, come around. I’ve seen more and more people make light jokes about the same meme without the accusatory tone. If you want discourse theres space to do so; it just has to be done better(imo). Preferably without snark or accusatory tones.
Okay, but, speaking as a woman, we try to explain these issues nicely, with gentle terminology and a big helping of ‘not all of you, but some of you…’ and we get ignored, dismissed, belittled, or flat-out gaslit.
So, we try going for the shock value to get you to at least pay attention instead of dismissing what we say as background noise or ‘us silly little women worrying our silly little heads over nothing’. And then we get told we can’t talk like that, that it’s insulting, that no man would listen because we’re belittling them, that it ‘doesn’t foster discussion’.
Although at least you heard us say something so many of us take it as a small win…
So, honest question. How do we explain it to you, so we don’t offend you, but you actually hear us? Actually get an idea of what it means to be afraid of footsteps behind us when we go out at night? To get leered at when all we’re trying to do is get a good workout at the gym? To have men just take liberties, like touching us, grabbing us? To not want to mention that we are a woman online, especially in gaming circles, because of the sexist bullshit and dismissive attitudes that will inevitably show up and run us out of a group we just want to be in because we like the game, damnit?
To weigh the decision to even make a post like this, because I know it will be brigaded and will attract sexist jerks who will try to shout me down? Or even attract stalkers who will follow me across instances to harass me?
Please, tell me how. Because we want you to understand. We don’t want to chase people away from discussions. But it’s so hard, and gets so discouraging…
When you’re arguing on an online space large enough for a position that doesn’t yet have overwhelming support, you’re always going to get some pushback of some kind. It’s never going to be completely pleasant. The silver lining is that, if you’re arguing for your positions well enough, you’re going to bring some more people to your side each time. Many of them will not be vocal, many of them will have to meditate of what you’ve said, for many of them it will just be a fleeting thought, but it might be a stepping stone that leads them to actually change their mind in a later discussion. I have this mindset because it’s coherent with how I’ve changed my mind over the years after engaging with different people, and so, when I’m advocating for something on a space that isn’t overwhelmingly welcoming (which might usually be autism advocacy, anti-capitalism, secularism, depending on the site), and I’m in a tempered mood at the moment, I immediately assume that I’m going to get pushback even on things that I’m objectively correct, but that doesn’t mean I’m not making useful progress, so I should argue with more charitability than I think the other person deserves.
On the gender issues topic specifically. Discounting a minority of people whom you’re never going to make see reason, your goal is to make your positions understandable to the men who either don’t have a strong opinion yet or are only mildly hostile. I’m going to use the example of an user I saw the other day out of memory: picture a man who has had an aggressively mediocre life: few meaningful relationships if any, no romantic or sexual partners, hating his job or whatever it is he’s studying, he hasn’t (or hasn’t seen himself having) acted particularly mean towards anyone in his life but he has particularly vivid memories of women or girls provoking him pain (be they a rude teacher, an abusive mother, high school bullies, or whatever). Now picture him reading these two messages:
and
I’ve made the nuance very obvious here, but it will usually be far more subtle. Sometimes it will be someone not making their position as fair and impartial as possible, sometimes it’ll be that they literally do not realize their words might be misinterpreted, but a good chunk of the individual shitshows I’ve seen in the past few days here are easily understandable if I picture someone saying: “I’ve been a sad shit for my whole life without harming anyone, and if anything, I’ve been treated unfairly. And now you’re telling me I’m the culprit!?”, and the difficulties of this guy through his life might have been several degrees less severe than your own, but if he’s misunderstood what you’re saying, or the message he’s read is less charitable, or if the person he’s just read has been perfectly reasonable, but five minutes ago he’s read a different message from someone else who hasn’t been, which twists the context, he isn’t entirely wrong, because he was minding his own business but now he feels accusations fall upon him out of nowhere.
On the bear argument specifically. Ignore the goddamn bear. You can make a lot of good arguments about why choosing the bear is wrong, and this derails PLENTY of discussions that could otherwise be useful and meaningful into a stunlock where one side wants to argue about why some people choose one way, and the other about the specific hypothetical. Don’t go into “(…) and that’s why I’d choose the bear”, ignore the metaphor, redirect the conversation in an useful direction, such as the actual living experiences of women, what kind of society would you want to see and what kind of specific changes would you like to see people make.
This advocacy is almost never going to be completely pleasant. This isn’t a justification, or discouragement, it’s just acknowledgement of the fact that plenty of people are going to be predisposed against your position, or skeptical, or outright hostile, and you personally are not going to see the fruits of your own, individual, specific labour, because whatever useful progress you make will be brewing on the background. Plenty of people whom you’ve made think will perhaps upvote you at best, but very, very few will admit “You’ve completely changed my mind on this”, but that doesn’t mean what you’re doing isn’t useful. Sometimes you won’t make the perfect argument, because you don’t have the exact perspective of what the other side is thinking, and because no human is omniscient, and you might have to rethink nuances, strategies and approaches, but engaging other people with the ultimate goal of creating a society where everyone is accepted in equality and freedom is always, on the long run, worthwhile.
Alright, but…
Why wouldn’t the safety of women have overwhelming support? Why are we always on the back foot when it comes to discussions like these? Why is this such a ‘small position’ that women find themselves making ludicrous arguments about bears in the first place?
I would hope that a discussion of safety for any group would have majority support.
And we do know it’s not all men. There are many men who would never do such a thing. Or who have even been abused themselves.
But, according to the CDC, over half of all women have experienced sexual violence, and 1 in 4 women have experienced attempted or completed rape. With those numbers, it’s not all men, but it’s not just a few men either.
With those statistics, we can’t afford to just… trust. And the fun part? Many times, it’s someone the woman knows. So we can’t always believe we’re safe even with friends and family.
And sadly, nature hasn’t supplied us with psychic powers to know when the big burly guy leaning in too close to talk is just socially awkward, or up to something more unpleasant.
So I ask… please be understanding. Men are, on the whole, bigger and stronger than women, so a bad encounter has a much stronger chance to go very, very bad for us.
I’m on the side of feminism, I’m not arguing against you. I’m trying to get you to understand the “battlefield”, because that’s literally what you asked for.
Differentiate between these two groups: the people who are going to be radically against you because they’re assholes and just don’t want equality, and those who, for one reason or another, think that you aren’t really defending equality. In my experience, the first group is much smaller, and they usually try not to have their behavior be too usually noticeable in public, while the latter is larger, more numerous, more vocal, and will receive the silent support of the former for entirely different reasons.
Let me go back here:
This, and its natural conclusion (“be cautious in situations where a potential aggressor may suffer no consequences”) is extremely reasonable, and I don’t think people should be blamed for that cautiousness in some situations. But getting that across to someone who hasn’t suffered the same kinds of victimization that lead you to take that position is difficult, because the position they’ve started the discussion at is “I haven’t done anything wrong and I’m being treated like a criminal!”, and they aren’t having that discussion in a perfectly quiet stage in front of someone who will express perfectly woven arguments, but on social media, where they fill find dumb arguments, stupid comparisons, unfair criticisms, real experiences, dubious narrations, tellings of statistically rare events, good arguments, and people spewing hate in one direction and the other, so even when you make the best possible case for your cause, people who in other circumstances would easily be capable of seeing your point, will already be angry, and therefore predisposed against it.
Thank you for writing this🙏 Only thing I think is missing is how it hurts people who are already on your side too if you overgeneralize.
An example is dr K a psychiatrist who does youtube videos, with some focus on gaming addiction. He had many women (and some men I’m sure) calling for him to speak out on women’s experiences, so he made a video talking about how women’s experiences were much harder and men were living on “easy mode.”
I personally haven’t watched any videos of his after that, not because they aren’t interesting psychology topics, and I know exactly what he means to say, but it was just such a hurtful thing to hear from someone that felt like was on my side. The comments were people who understood what he meant feeling hurt and disengaging, and the people who needed to be reached just getting angry, and now it’s ousted a lot of people who were already empathetic towards women’s struggles.
I really appreciate that you made this post. Every top-level comment here is complaining about it being “rage bait” and that the question would “never foster productive discussion.” Why? Why aren’t men capable of seeing the scenario, recognizing why it’s necessary to say something like that, and getting over themselves just a little bit to get the point? The original question wasn’t even a “not all men” thing, there’s no actual reason to get mad about it enough to dismiss the dicussion. We have to be able to have a conversation where the other side is allowed to say something a tiny bit outside of our standards for what we want them to say, or we’ll never have a conversation at all.
The irony is, I am seeing a lot of productive discussion? Like high key? Alongside the standard rage, trolling and harassment of course (which should be banned).
I genuinely think that, if women actually stick around, this event could be a net positive for the Lemmyverse. What’s needed is just like several dozen deep breaths, some listening, and of course more effective moderation of the bad actors.
For sure. I hope lemmy’s mod tools have improved, I heard they were basically nonexistent before.
here’s something i’ve formed up recently after this man/bear thing happened, it’s a working theory, and i’m curious to see what people think. If no likey, please yell at me in reply.
because it’s basically impossible? It’s like asking someone born without vision to see. It’s a significant cultural divide (i say cultural as a stop gap here) between two massive parties who have different understandings and views of the world. It shouldn’t come as a surprise when one party expresses a doctored viewpoint of theirs to the other side, for the other side to be really fucking confused.
I take it you probably don’t know much about nuclear power? If so, it’d be like me coming out of the blue when you mention that fukushima was bad, instead of me talking about why fukushima happened, why it was bad, what could’ve been prevented, and how it shouldn’t have happened. I started talking about reactor design, and going through the different generations of designs, talked about the EPR, the EBWR, the ABWR, the PWR, the MSR, the ESR, the PBR, the SSR, etc… You quite literally, do not need that level of background to be able to comprehend fukushima specifically.
I think it’s a similar thing, where people are trying to make people comprehend something they can’t experience, don’t really care about on a personal level. They might know someone who has, which makes them sympathetic/empathetic to it, but that’s it. We all understand, on some level, that this is an issue, i don’t know how much the specific experience here matters, when the broad problem is very much identifiable, and objectively bad. And that everybody probably already agrees with it. It seems rather redundant to me.
It’s like trying to explain “war bad” by showing pictures of war casualties to people, all you’re doing is traumatizing them in that case.
This is an excellent analysis of the reasoning that led into this. Thank you for sharing.
Plenty of people are dismissing this as “ragebait,” which, sure. But like, what on earth is more rage-worthy than systemic rape culture and silencing of women?
There is definitely a time and place for tone policing. But that’s never the exact minute a woman expresses her lived experience in a way that actually grabs attention. ❤️
idk probably the fact that instead of talking about that fact, we were sat there yelling at each other about bears in a hypothetical forest?
Like don’t get me wrong i like talking about issues, but there’s a point where you just have to sit back and wonder what the fuck you’re doing with your life. This was one of them.
This entire post is about women who were talking about rape culture getting harrased into deleting their accounts.
The problem I care about is barely the hypothetical forest at this point in time, but the abject abuse. I encourage you to take the same perspective.
yeah, i could see that being a problem, i didn’t experience that, nor perpetrate that. Unless being mad at someone on the internet entails that, in which case, i think that’s less of a me problem. Because this is the internet.
I didn’t DM people or anything though, just yelled about shit in the comments. I think part of the problem was that we even started talking about the bear problem at all. I’m not really sure how anybody expected it to go? I’m not sure how i would’ve expected it to go, but i’m not sure i would’ve posted it either to be honest.
I just want to let you know that when women share their experiences, some men like me will process what they’ve read and understand, and not reply or anything. I don’t have anything to add. I’m probably part of a large silent group.
That was before the bear thing. I actually hadn’t even seen the bear meme.
When I read a woman share her experiences, I just get sad about it all and move to the next post in my Lemmy feed or whatever I’m reading on the internet.
you cant explain it to someone who don’t want to hear it, but hear me out: bear vs cop.
picture this: you are in the woods smoking some weed in an illegal country. bear or cop?
the whole country is illegal? When the fuck did this meta drop?
yea cop bout to bust you with slovak republic what do
well shit i better be on the move then jesus
ok so, as a result of the bear debate, i wouldn’t exactly say it was all roses and sunshine over there, probably a thunderstorm and bristles more like.
I think most people want the statement laid out very literally in front of them. Usually being pretty fucking obtuse about shit, tends to get peoples attention. Sitting in a corner and vaguely looking in the direction of someone isn’t going to.
maybe i’m just really fucking autistic or something, but if that shit doesn’t work, i wouldn’t do it. I’d click into a thread titled “men raping women is a problem” and see what’s going on, and chances are, it’s going to be more civil than the bear incident.
i’d be up for just fucking talking about it. I’m sure a number of other people would as well. You aren’t going to appease everyone, that’s impossible, you just need to appease the majority. And frankly, anybody who is reading about “hey uhm, rape bad, no do?” and gets fucking pissed off about it? They’re probably not a good person to be honest.
genuinely, i just think straight up, open conversation about it. People can’t play nice? Don’t let em, i guess? there are a few options there. I’m not an admin/mod, so don’t ask me lol.
Yeah at this point I don’t care about the bear thing. So two weeks ago. I do however care about the abject harrassment that happened. Thank you for your perspective.
Sure. However, the two aren’t unrelated. Not that it justifies the harassment you’ve seen (which as mentioned mods are pretty solid on most instances but reports help them a lot). Given what shitshow it turned into it’s clear that more conversations around the topic are needed. I think those type of people will still pop their head up. When they do, if the entire conversation isn’t already a shitfight because of how it was initiated, these type will be easier to identify and ban. Focusing solely on the outcome and ignoring how we got here only ensures it will be repeated. Lemmy is growing still, there will be challenges on the way.
I definitely hope the bear thing isn’t the last time SA is discussed on Lemmy. With such a male heavy population, it’s honestly a tremendous opportunity to expose a huge chunk of men to basic feminist theory. Fight the good fight homie 💖
I don’t think I’ll ever understand this reaction. I can only assume it’s stupidity leading these people to think all men are being accused of this.
Nah. Defensiveness in this context is a red flag because it is transparently obvious why a woman would choose the bear. It needn’t be a strictly rational choice; it’s a vote of no confidence in men earned through lived experience. The fact that it’s even a question should be a seen by men as deeply sad: a reminder of the work that must still be done. The very act of trying to convince a woman of the error of her choice is a sign of a failure to understand the nature of the problem, the exercise, or both.
This is by no means what bears are known for. Black bears will frighten off easily. Brown bears are dangerous, yes, but much depends on the nature of the encounter.
It already has, but thanks for the self report?