(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.
Here’s my take: the bear thing is causing such a visceral reaction that it is very hard to take a step back, not take it personally and have a rational discussion about it. Even if you know the statistics. Even if you’re absolutely certain you’d do the right thing (or maybe especially then).
I was exposed to a somewhat similar experience in college: while walking through the campus one evening I realised the girl in front of me was a good friend of mine, so I rushed to catch up. When she heard me she quickened her pace close to running, and only stopped when I said her name and something like “wait up!”. I was just happy to meet a friend. She, on the other hand, was absolutely terrified, and told me all about it as we walked towards the exit.
That evening I realised that women experience the world much different than men. That there’s an underlying level of potential violence that they evaluate and weigh against potential benefits from encounters and interactions with men in almost all social contexts. And knowing that has recalibrated my behaviour to a certain extent, as I realised women can’t afford to give me the benefit of the doubt, especially in contexts where they feel vulnerable.
I wish more men would get this point, especially in their formative years. It’s not a judgement on their character when women that barely know them are careful around them. Trust needs to be earned. And for a woman, the cost of misplaced trust is too damn high.
Yeah man, thanks for sharing your story, genuinely very poignant.
But at this point I genuinely don’t care about the bear thing. Women were harrased into leaving the platform, nothing was done to the accounts who did it, and that’s the story here.
Do you have any of the accounts doing the harassment? If you would, DM me those that you have, and I’ll personally look into it, and reach out to instance admins with my findings.
done, thank you
I guess I’m out of the loop or something cause I haven’t seen any of it, but harassers should be blocked by mods.
Once, I noticed once I was being followed by someone on my college campus once. Sure it made me a bit anxious, but as a reasonably large male-presenting person in a place I felt relatively safe, I didn’t really think they were a threat as long as I kept to crowded areas so it was just a mild discomfort. Turns out it was a random teacher (not one of mine) who just decided to try to keep pace with me because I was walking fast. At least he eventually explained himself eventually, but like isn’t it obvious that you shouldn’t just follow strangers around? Did he just think I wouldn’t notice them following me? Are many guys that oblivious to their surroundings that they wouldn’t notice? Or unaware of how that would make someone uncomfortable? Not implying you trying to catch up to a friend is comparable: just something your story reminded me of.
I think most people are somewhat oblivious to them making others feel uncomfortable because they can clearly see you and they don’t feel nervous, so their brain tells them no one around them feels nervous. The more the reverse happens (them feeling followed) the more aware they’ll become that they’re doing it.
Imo the bear thing was phrased in a way to cause that visceral reaction. It was intended to be antagonistic. If the same point was phrased the way you phrased it above, I want to believe we would have much more civil discussion about it. But instead, the posts put many male readers on the defensive and those that tried to explain were seen as defending this antagonistic stance.
That is no excuse for DM harassment or harassment on other posts, just my take on the reason the discussion turned so uncivil.
Yeah, it was ragebait alright. Then again, if it were phrased in a reasonable manner, would we be talking this much about it? If the objective was to kick-start a conversation, it did the job 110%
A conversation yes, just not a productive one. It may have done more damage than good, since many people now associate this issue with the ragebait and don’t take it seriously.
I don’t think it’s the phrasing. You would need an entirely different question to not elicit the response we saw. It wasn’t that the question that was asked that angered people, it was that women consistently chose the bear. this question would have been a nothing burger otherwise. At the same time, though, the question was pitched because the author already knew what the answer would be. They understood how frequently unknown men pose a threat to women.
What this response from many men the shows is that most dudes are still not ready to talk about just how much more dangerous the world is for women at a baseline measurement - quite explicitly because of predatory dudes.
Look at the comment from ZeroGravitas. Even if you insist on asking the question which I don’t see why, just prefacing it with what he wrote would completely transform what it was. The issue may not even be the question but the lack of context/explanation before sharing it.
I read his comment, and I disagree that it was explicitly ragebait. It was making a point attempting to bring women’s safety to the forefront of discussion (it succeeded but enflamed too much to be useful).
So what is the bear thing? I’ve seen reference to it a couple of times… I get the gist, but like what’s the source?
Just a post of someone saying they’d rather be stuck in the middle of the woods with a bear rather than with an unknown man, been posted lots of places not just lemmy.
I’m confused. How is that controversial, and how are people taking it personally?
The first one is just an expression of biases that their experiences have resulted in. As for the second one, I’m clueless. Maybe if you feel like the main character in every situation, they’d be offended because the man in reference is then, and as such not unknown?
If I had to guess I’d say because “an unknown man” can be intepreted as “an average man” which obviously is going to hit a lot of people.
The actual statistics of man vs bear is not really the point through, and a large number people did not get that. It’s just that the question was phrased (intentionally or unintentionally) in a way that lends itself to this comparison.
Thanks. In other words just not understanding basic words and statistics?
In this case, unknown/random sample != average of samples. Being alone in the woods, and encountering a bear, is arguably more dangerous than the average male human. Most bears that aren’t grizzlies will happily leave you alone, which I hope is also the case with the average man. If you are unlucky with which person you encounter, the dangers can be much worse.
Probably Bayesian elements here too, where the end result is “what is riskier”, with an implicit assumption of “meeting a bear” = unlikely, “meeting a man” = likely (relatively). In any case, not listening to the emotional takeaway from shitty experiences, is, ironically, a very male stereotype.
How would you feel if the hypothetical was asking if you’d rather encounter a bear or a Muslim?
What about a bear or a person who is black?
Or a bear vs an immigrant?
See the issue?
Also, when we dehumanize or other an entire sex (which is what we’re doing here) who do you think suffers the most irl from that dehumanization?
Because it isn’t rich white men in gated suburban communities. It’s the black and brown men who are already viewed as inherently harmful and are disproportionately violently victimized by police and the state.
If we want more George Floyds then we should keep spreading memes like this. Because this contributes to the mindset that allows us to view men of color as inherently dangerous superpredators
I’m going to take all your questions at face value, and assume it’s all good faith.
My emotions are not that fickle. I also don’t see an inherent problem with questions, nor this one in particular. It would be stupid of me to assume you mean something more specific than what you’ve stated. I’ll give you the benefit of the doubt, and ask to clarify constraints.
Same thing here. You realise that what we’d be exploring is the concept of, and awareness of, potential biases and prejudices? And, more importantly, the prevalence of experiences that lead to such biases?
Oh, this one is clear cut. Immigrants are the fucking worst.
(jk)
Nope. I don’t. You should re-evaluate the purpose of having conversations and discussing hypotheticals.
Is that what you think we’re doing here? If so, then we arrived at what the misunderstanding is. Which is a good thing. Or, it is if you give a shit about understanding the argument, and less about making your own. The latter is of course fine, but, on its own.
Not related or relevant here. Not saying it isn’t important, but, as mentioned. If you want to make your own arguments or discuss other things, that’s fine. Probably effective to start your own thread for that.
Very true, but I think there’s something lost in translation when people go on the internet and turn “I need to be cautious around men because they might be dangerous” to “Men are dangerous,” and this generalization is what causes so much of the backlash online.