this post was submitted on 13 May 2024
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Unpopular Opinion

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(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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[–] michaelmrose 26 points 6 months ago (28 children)

Regarding Man v Bear I think the topic is rather silly. Most bears aren't looking to have a meet and greet if you do come across a bear one of three things are true. It's here to eat you, it didn't leave because its a she-bear and it has cubs its protecting, or you just startled it. If any of the above is true you are at best in serious danger. If it is actually trying to prey upon you then you are probably fucked. Whereas 100% of the bears you surprise in the woods are extremely dangerous 99.99% of people you meet man or woman are just people like yourself not looking for trouble.

It's not shocking that the 99.9% of men who aren't predators waiting in the bush feel justified in feeling unfairly vilified.

[–] MrCrankyBastard 41 points 6 months ago (4 children)

My proverbial beef isn't the pointing out of how manny men are predators and that the risksfor women are non-zero; my problem more specifically is that the meme stacks handily on top of the already vexing racial profiling I deal with as a black man who's had false allegations leveled in the past and lost jobs because of the weaponization of this fear. I have already spent damn near a half century being presumed some kind of feral Mandingo rape beast purely for existing while black. The presumption of interest in all of these women like a scene out of Kentucky Fried Movie gets really old and they get super vindictive when rejected.

[–] [email protected] 12 points 6 months ago (1 children)

Yeah that’s what I found the most surprising. Even after you understand what women really mean in this thought experiment, it’s just textbook discrimination and no different than targeting certain races as a cop.

I thought as a society we all agreed that was bad but apparently it’s okay if the victims are men.

So this thought experiment does reveal sexism, the sexism against men.

[–] [email protected] 9 points 6 months ago

I feel for you, the casual racism and sexism against black men is pretty crazy. Used to work with a guy that wore a suit every day in a very casual office, because women wouldn't get on the elevator with him otherwise.

[–] TubularTittyFrog 4 points 6 months ago* (last edited 6 months ago)

Yep. It's incredibly fucked up to think how prevalent that 1920s horseshit still is in many people's minds 100 years later.

People still seem to think Birth of a Nation is a documentary.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 6 months ago

This was moving to read. It’s a fucked up situation, thank you for sharing.

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