(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.

Very good comments that express key points:

• Detailed summary of the situation if you’re wondering what’s going on
• The rhetorical value of the bear hypothetical and what this means for you
• One example of why the long-term rhetorical value of the hypothetical is poor, in the context of intersectionality
• What does disenfranchisement mean in this context?
• The importance of not asking women to tone down their expressions of fear and frustration
• “But why can’t they just say it nicely?”
• The importance of participation in kindness toward young men, specifically outside the context of people speaking their experiences

The number of examples I have seen of people being told to shut up about their lived experiences with sexual abuse in the past 24 hours on this platform is deeply disturbing.

I am calling on y’all to take a deep breath and listen to women for once. There is a time and place for tone policing and it’s never the very minute a woman speaks up.

Very good comments that express key points:

• Detailed summary of the situation if you’re wondering what’s going on
• The rhetorical value of the bear hypothetical and what this means for you
• One example of why the long-term rhetorical value of the hypothetical is poor, in the context of intersectionality
• What does disenfranchisement mean in this context?
• The importance of not asking women to tone down their expressions of fear and frustration
• “But why can’t they just say it nicely?”
• The importance of participation in kindness toward young men, specifically outside the context of people speaking their experiences

Edit: This post has now been removed and restored twice. I want to encourage you all:

Be decent to one another

I think this post is a valuable thing given the current state of the Fediverse, please don’t fuck it up for us by being toxic in the comments.