Be sure to follow the rule before you head out.
Rule: You must post before you leave.
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.
I found the recent incel-ish responses on various Lemmy communities to the bear meme to be off-putting. Granted, it's much worse on Reddit but I would have expected better on this platform.
precisely! to date lemmy had been the most progressive and respectable toward human dignity community i have followed, but that facade has dropped pretty quickly with this turn :(
I hope this doesn't sound aggressive, but unless you're a man, you never had to venture very far on Lemmy to experience misogyny. If you ever mentioned you were a woman in any of the major instances and communities in any context except "I'm a woman and here's what I don't like about other women," you were gonna get misogynistic replies and a shocking amount of downvotes. It's just what happens when any internet community is dominated by a single gender I guess.
Lemmy's always been great about almost every other social issue, except sometimes trans issues and neurodivergence if you stepped out of the communities for it, but women's issues have always been an absolute train wreck around here.
Even as a man I noticed pretty quickly that Lemmy can be weird about women, maybe as an extension of many nerd spaces still being like that. I really hope we get or federate some communities with a different gender balance, I guess beehaw and blahaj already try to be.
This definitely aligns with my experience and understanding as well. Thank you for sharing :)
Yeah, I've seen ignorant takes about that on tumblr too, from accounts I thought knew better. Genuinely disappointing to see.
i guess i wasn't online when this bear meme happened? what was it about?
Thank you for the link. It seems rather surprising by how many woman apparently chooses the bear option. I understand their reasoning but I thought it would be 60/40 favoring the bear.
After seeing what you're talking about, I'm glad I mostly stick to Blahaj Zone.
💙🦈💙
The number of comments here that seek to immediately discount what you are saying is deeply troubling.
Yes! In several aspects, I appreciate the progressive nature of the community here. However, the predominantly male composition of the community is a significant drawback. There is a noticeable lack of maningful exposure to even basic feminist theory compared to Marxist, environmental, racial, or other left-leaning theories. It is my hope that we, as a community, can acknowledge this deficiency and make efforts to address it, as recent events have shown that the status quo is doing nothing but harm.
A lot of people seem to think things like sexism are a personal failing or deliberate act as opposed to a systemic issue that affects us all.
you_are_not_immune_to_propaganda.jpg
Lemmy has been very good in my experience with recognizing this truth when it comes to systemic racism. I guess I thought it would translate more easily to gender as well but clearly I was quite mistaken.
People "don't want to listen" because the moment anyone speaks out against the generalizations, it becomes personal attacks against them. "you are part of the problem if you don't immediately agree with everything I say." That's not to say that someone is not valid for the way they feel after experiencing something traumatic like SA and having hesitation associating with or being around men, but the accusations of being the problem towards people who are innocent make people not want to support you. It's also very "only my feelings matter" when it starts sounding like I shouldn't be anywhere in the remote vicinity of or exist because I might be making a woman uncomfortable.
Once when I was in high school I was in the classroom alone waiting for class to start, minding my own business and not paying any attention to anyone else. A girl walked in and told me that I looked like I wanted to kill her. I didn't even look in her direction. How dare I be quiet and mind my own business, I made her feel uncomfortable.
It's also funny that people are saying "y'all always have to make it about you, it's not about you so what you think doesn't matter." Yeah how dare I have feelings and be offended that other people make generalizations about me and start saying I'm part of the problem.
Absolutely not.
The people “speaking out against the generalizations” need to find their own space and time to do so, not to do it in direct replies to women who are speaking up about a very personal and invasive topic.
It’s an exact parallel to those who screamed “All Lives Matter” in response to BLM.
There are inumerable comment sections for men to explore and express the negative qualities of the patriarchy in their lives, !mensliberation@lemmy.ca being one I have seen that seems positive. But that space is not to be held the moment and place women begin to talk about their own experiences.
None of the situations I was talking about involved direct replies to women talking about their own experiences. Everything I've seen has essentially been "I'd choose the bear and you should feel ashamed." If there are people making those kinds of comments in reply to women speaking about their experience and how they feel, I would agree with you that it is not acceptable. But 90% of what I see is blanket accusations or false dilemmas placing some viewpoint on me that I do not hold.
And in a way it does resemble "all lives matter." But when there are people here directly saying that all men should be ashamed, that they are not safe to be around, and I have seen people saying in these threads that all men are rapists, it seems a little hard to see how that would make anyone understand or sympathize with the people making these comments. It starts to sound like "my feelings should take precedence over your existence" instead of "this is what I feel and why" or "this is how we can improve things."
Its also ridiculous to me when it's "but a man could rape me" but no "a bear could maul me." If someone says that they have been SA'd or have otherwise had negative experiences, fine. I still think its a bit of a stretch to generalize it but I'm not out there saying "BuT nOt AlL mEn" to that.
None of the situations I was talking about involved direct replies to women talking about their own experiences.
Okay well that’s literally the topic of this post. So you are butting in with irrelevant commentary a bit.
Your comment is kind of funny because it’s definitely problematic in several ways. So I’m not surprised at all that you have heard from others before that you’re part of the problem. When enough people tell you that, then maybe you should do some selfcrit instead of continuing to victimblame women for experiencing sexism 🤷
It's funny that you assumed that "enough people told me that" from one instance that this reminded me of. I didn't victim blame them for experiencing sexism. I said that accusing innocent people who they've never interacted with and generalizing statements is ridiculous. Maybe be more specific on how my comment was "problematic" instead of some vague doublespeak.
I hope you don't mind me joining the conversation, but I just wanted to say that I understand and validate your experience and emotions. It's really terrible to go through something like that, and I don't appreciate the other commenter minimizing your experience.
One thing that isn't always acknowledged is that the patriarchy can negatively impact everyone, regardless of gender. Your story is a clear example of this. Feminism, as it works to dismantle the patriarchy, can ultimately benefit and liberate men as well.
If you haven't already, I suggest checking out !mensliberation@lemmy.ca. I'm not very active there, but I've seen some really positive conversations happening. Feel free to give it a try if you're interested - you might find some value there. And of course, you're always welcome to stay here in 196 as well 💙🦈.
Of course it happened in a blahaj-less meme page 😞
shoutout to blahaj and the absolute queens who run it 💆♀️🙂↕️
Can you maybe provide some links to examples? I haven't seen any of this.
i wont link directly, but see my comment history i call out a few
—disclaimer do not harrass or brigade—
edit fine since you all won’t do me the decency of clicking on my name before you spam “doubt”
do not harrass or brigade, mods please just remove this comment if people start being bad
among others that have been erased because women are being bullied into deleting threads and entire accounts.
Ohhhh this is why my posts finally came out of the negatives.
Thank you!
Ah yes, this IS about the bear meme. Maybe this is a lesson that doubling down on an inflammatory meme is the worst way to attempt to get a point across, claiming that people annoyed with the meme are attempting to silence you is just trippling down.
Hey you had some decent points in the other thread. :) Please take a moment to reflect as I know you have it in you.
claiming that people annoyed with the meme are attempting to silence you
Emphatically: Not what I am doing. I am referencing literal instances where woman said “hey this is what happened to me,” and men responded in a dogpile “shut up, you are antagonizing me.”
When someone shows me a bear i'm all like "where's the second head"
I haven’t been on here in a few days, what’s going on?
Men reacting to intentionally inflammatory bear meme is an affront to women apparently
*”Men telling women to say their experiences in a less antagonistic way is an affront to women.” FTFY
I am absolutely with you in agreeing that the bear meme is inflammatory. But this post is about women who are telling their stories about being SA’d and men dogpiling telling them to shut up. A very different matter that I haven’t seen in any other community.
This post might not be about you, but it is about a real thing that happened/is happening. Take a beat to internalize that :)
Here is context first of all.
Second of all, the discussion surrounding this meme prompted several women to share their stories regarding SA, to which quite a few men brigaded and harassed those women, sometimes until they deleted their accounts.
Ohhh, that issue. Thank you! Yeah, Lemmy silencing them is not at all cool. I really hate how we are needing to sensor or provide a trigger warning for practically everything anymore. Sure some things like SA, or self harm make sense. I’ve literally seen someone put a trigger warning on a kid friendly picture of a fucking fursuit, with hashtags specifically to attract other furries. The internet has become way too sensitive about everything, it’s so annoying sometimes
The simple answer is to just listen to women, and not just wait to get in a "not all men" and act smug. Easy as that.
Thank... Someone that i only stay in local Blåhaj zone
The Sam Altman jock riders on this platform are insufferable...
That guy is a moron. Seriously, he's not very smart and no one should listen to anything he says.
I wanna know why nobody is standing up for the bears. Just because some bears attack people in the woods doesn't mean they all will.
Most bears aren't aggressive and wouldn't actually attack anybody unless provoked. I mean, I get it. Maybe only 10% of bears would get agro for no reason. But how am I supposed to know if this one is one of those 10%?
We need to have a discussion about how the good bears are becoming disenfranchised by being lumped in with a very small minority of bears that would go out of their way to harm you for no reason. #NotAllBears
edit: a typo
It's .world, full of liberals