(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.

  • Kedly
    176·
    6 months ago

    Meanwhile its the opposite for me. Character assasinating everyone who wasnt a fan of the bear meme and mods deleting any post that wasnt fully inflammatory has made me second guess whether I want to be here far more than the Tankies ever did

    • spujb@lemmy.cafeOP
      114·
      6 months ago

      I am with you. At least one of my feet is halfway out the door unless we can stand against harrassment with the same energy we did against tankies. Because fuck that noise. I like the fediverse but not enough for me to just stand by and watch this.

      • Kedly
        93·
        6 months ago

        Tbh, I might just give Gaiaonline another shot, yeah my knowledge of world news’ll suffer a bit, but maybe thats not a bad thing

        Edit: These downvotes are proving my point, this particular comment has nothing offensive in it whatsoever. Oh no, I’m thinking about going back to a Early 2000’s anime dress up forum, what an awful person!