(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.
Removed by mod
This comment was reported. I have left it, and decided to explain.
Nobody is saying a person is more dangerous than a bear. They are saying that a woman feels safer in the woods knowing that a bear is there than a man.
This is because a bear, generally, won’t attack unless provoked. Not all men (and I’m a man, before you try to guess) have that much restraint. This is not saying that ALL men are bad, or even MOST. Just statistically speaking, a woman is more likely to be hurt by a man in the woods than a bear.
Ignorance of the argument can be solved, and I hope this helped.