(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.
men don’t get support and safety for being victims. we get ostracized and many see our confession of previous abuse as ‘evidence’ that we deserved it and brought it upon ourselves.
For many things, yes. I used to want to adopt kids, but I don’t think I can deal with the public perception of being a male(-ish) person caring for children anymore, having heard so many rough stories from close friends, who at least have a wife to yell at sexists. Having a less traditional partnership won’t win any positive counts in the public eye, no matter how good of parents we might be.
There are quite a few stories of the same ostracizing for females (regarding SA), just less public attention on the stories for males who go through similar problems. All in all it’s fucked and we need people to take this seriously. I see the stand that this is making everyone defensive, but at the same time it is at least calling up the issue and maybe after people calm down, more people might acknowledge it? Yeah. I am too naive. Or wishful.
i am naive too, but experience has taught me that with age people only get worse, they don’t get better.
i’m now at the age where if i walk my dog and someone’s kid wants to pet it they think i’m a pedo trying to seduce their kid. nothing is just innocent and pure anymore. the well has been poisoned and people assume the worst when they have zero reason too… (well other than that the internet/tv told them to do it)