(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.
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.
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.
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).
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%
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.
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.
How would you feel if the hypothetical was asking if you’d rather encounter a bear or a Muslim?
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.
What about a bear or a person who is black?
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?
Or a bear vs an immigrant?
Oh, this one is clear cut. Immigrants are the fucking worst.
(jk)
See the issue?
Nope. I don’t. You should re-evaluate the purpose of having conversations and discussing hypotheticals.
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?
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.
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
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.
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
The irony is that the poor behavior explains why many women would pick the bear
Another irony is that the most dangerous bear to come face to face with is the sweet little baby bear.
Is that true?
Most bears try to avoid you. The best thing you can do on a nature trail is be noisy, talk a bunch, make sure the bear knows you are there. Because they don’t want anything to do with humans.
The second worst thing you can do is surprise a bear.
The worst thing you can do is get between a baby bear and its mom.
Hmm, I’m starting to think maybe I should start acting more like a bear
If you’re face to face with baby, Mama’s behind you, and she considers you a threat to her toddler.
Yeah, it’s like… The fact that it’s controversial is why it’s controversial.
You’re either willfully ignorant or you understand to some degree where the controversy is (even if you don’t necessarily in your heart agree that bear is better), and can concede that there’s maybe a problem with what humanity calls “masculine.”
And if you’re willfully ignorant, then, that’s why some people say bear. And it’s also a canary in the coalmine example of this form of dangerous masculinity.
Same goes for harassing those men who rejected the notion of the meme with civility.
Plenty of simple trolls trying to insert the word “incel” wherever they can, and plenty of people trying to invalidate everything men have to say.
Lemmy is becoming more known, and with that comes the point at which bots and trolls emerge. We have to respond accordingly - and remember to be united and civil, even in disagreements.
And yes, ragebait content should be banned. The bear hypothetical is one of those, since it does imply anti-male sentiment, but does it in a way that can be minimized to “women just complaining”. It is a very malicious attempt at generating a lot of hostility, to the point where it’s hard even to give benefit of the doubt.
As per “how we attract women” in particular, I think the most important part is to make Lemmy less about tech and politics and more about all sorts of hobbies, occupations, and a fun time. While women are very welcome in the tech and politics spaces, those spaces are historically dominated by men, and for as long as those are the pillars of the Lemmy conversations, we’ll see this gap over and over.
We can’t take bias in support of women just to attract more of them on the platform, this won’t end well. We need to protect everyone from the harassment and trolling, regardless of gender.
my favorite irony is those who are supposedly ‘agasint the patriarchy’, are the very same one who are so fervent in their use of it when it comes to putting down men and ‘keeping them in their place’.
“But have you thought about challenging a man who does?”
This was one of the comments in response to me calling the post divisive.
The only people defending this garbage meme are troglodytes. Plenty of trogs in this thread.
Seems to me that the rage bait did it’s job, but the only who won was the author and website that got all the clicks and ads serving, while lemmy got a shitstorm for nothing.
Lemmy honestly is not friendly or welcoming. My wife left after being attacked for any comment she made where she mentioned being a female. The man vs bear debate wasn’t even around until a month or so later.
If you’re not a tech savvy male and you’re lurking just don’t get involved. They’ll belittle anyone who’s isn’t. You need to have PC for gaming on a Linux computer having the ability to program within Linux while running your internet through a pihole so your jellyfin server can remain hidden through the VPN. If you even ask any question about anything I said prepare to be shamed for not knowing how to already know.
If the fear for a typical woman is this bad, then we need to be better about teaching boys. I’m a pretty empathetic person, just ask my new very rapidly made female best friend. But despite the wife, and a few pretty damn close female friends, close mom, sister…. The fears expressed in my short reading on the current discussion have never been as clearly communicated, well the fear was definitely clear, but not the magnitude.
I agree with the sentiment that it’s just a bad premise. It puts everyone straight into a defensive posture, and no one learns anything when they’re trying to defend their sense of self.
On the other hand, if people are going to DMs to harass beyond the context of the heated conversation… well they ARE DEFINITELY the kind of people who are a threat, and need to be dealt with.
Source for the hostile comments? I know that these types of people make up the minority of users, but I would still like a source for these hateful comments.
I think regardless of the platform it will get ugly when topics are controversial. How ugly it gets is mostly depending on the level of moderation. It doesn’t need many trolls or ill willing people to derail a discussion among hundreds of good meaning people.
We also tend to concentrate on the things we consider unfavorable. If among 100 comments 5 are sexist, these 5 will get far more attention than the other 95.
I mean, I’ve seen people uttering death threads on YouTube, because the YouTuber used butter in a recipe, not margarine. One of several hundred comments under that video, but the only one I remember…
Narrowminded cisgender ragebait did what? Please tell me it ain’t so!
The bear thing isn’t controversial, it’s just ragebait. You ragebait, you get rage. It is not a serious argument, which is why it constantly has to spark as ragebait over in the meme communities. The people taking it as a serious argument are making their serious arguments look bad.
This was such obvious rage bait, I skipped over it the first few times, but it kept coming back. So, who’s toxic now, the rage bait demonizing an entire gender because some are bad, or all the deniers/haters? I hate to say both sides, but both sides should have dropped this rage bait and opened their discussions in a more serious thread
Ya’ll don’t like getting called out on your bullshit. Ofc I’m not gonna let myself get grouped into something worse than a fucking animal. Go have your rights and empathy activism someway it doesn’t clump men in the “not people” category
You are absolutely entitled to that. In fact I quite agree with you on many levels.
None of that makes harrassment okay. Which is the topic of this discussion.
Personally I think its possibly a bad reaction to the right thinking in a counterintuitive way.
Rape, sexual assault, domestic violence, stalking… they have all been reduced to some of the most vile crimes in the eyes of most men these days that when you hear people claim “Men” do this that some men have a very “Hey, FUCK YOU!” reaction.
I want to put out there, that as a man I shared my story… And I was down voted and disrespected.
So you can probably remove ‘for women’ in the title. Lemmy is very much an echo chamber. You don’t have to look around very hard to see that there’s a large amount of intolerance on Lemmy.
i’d like to make this about me, a man, who will think of the men etc etc
Case in point
People get really upset over a hypothetical. I don’t like posts that put all men down, but this wasn’t one of them.
Also bears generally mind their own business as long as you keep your distance, with statistically less than one person per year dying from a bear attack in America. The last time it happened in my state was several years ago and due to some dumbass intentionally getting close to it to take photos.
People keeps downplaying the situation as a “hypothetical”. Plenty of comments can be made in the hypothetical that should be reacted to, and some hypothetical comments can even get you sent to jail. Tbh
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I wonder why this is? (Serious) Tiktok has significantly more female users than male… Maybe it’s a format thing?
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most women aren’t internet nerds. sorry to disappoint you.
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well, then be get ready for it to get as shitty as reddit, as it gets flooded by a diverse set of assholes instead of a select set of assholes who at least don’t take shit too seriously.
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I literally have no clue what man vs bear is and honestly sounds like it should stay that way1
It’s a thought experiment. Women are asked if they’d rather stumble upon a bear or a man in the woods. Most women choose bear. Some boys got really offended at the women’s choice.
Most girls had Teddy bears so that’s an obvious choice imo. They don’t understand bear mauling from grizzlies or face eating polar bears
I think the point isn’t that certain bear species are aggressive, it’s that all bear species are unapologetically bears. They don’t try to pretend they are something else. Bears are bears and they all treat humans more or less the same
The point is their only experience with bears are the cute toys and child artwork. Men in their experience were sexual predators and viewed and acted as women were prey.
“Women don’t know bears can kill you because they had fluffy teddy bears growing up” is what you sound like.
What? First off, boys also have teddy bears. Most people’s experiences with bears are precisely what you described as solely women’s experiences.
Like what are bears in men’s daily experience? I’ll isolate down to North America to keep things simple.
Most men’s experience with bears is identical to that of women’s. Most men live in suburbs or cities, and haven’t even seen a bear outside of a zoo. But most men and women know that bears are dangerous wild animals because…we have been taught that.
I don’t get why women are so infantalized by men. Now I’m just imagining a father walking up to his son, telling his daughter to leave the room then telling him “bears are dangerous son, you never wanna be close to one and here’s what you do to stay safe, also do NOT tell your sister this, she’s a girl and doesn’t need to know this because one day she’ll have a husband that will protect her from the bears”
Number of female hunters vs male? Men have more encounters
And another broad generalization goes to you.
Women aren’t idiots. They know what bears are. They also know what men are which is precisely why they are mostly answering the way they do.
The bear scenario is the perfect division inducing shitstorm.
It’s understandable what the memes portrays the danger that women face, daily. The fact that they frequently don’t feel comfortable or even just basic safety is definitely valid and worth discussion.
However, the bear vs man thing was just the worst vehicle to induce that discussion. On one side men who may not be the most well informed about women issues; will get immediately defensive at being compared to a large animal known for tearing people apart and eating them alive.
The members of the other side who see all the angry men getting defensive at them for expressing this view and think it’s purely because they aren’t empathetic to these issue, they “hate” women or they’re marginalising what is a real and daily danger.
Of course there are actual trolls, toxic arseholes and people who have 0 interest actual discourse or understanding but fuck them, I agree ban em.
It was never going to end in a productive, calm or rational discussion and frankly I think tarring the entire of lemmy for it is equally as unproductive. I’ve seen plenty of people initially aggressive to the meme, come around. I’ve seen more and more people make light jokes about the same meme without the accusatory tone. If you want discourse theres space to do so; it just has to be done better(imo). Preferably without snark or accusatory tones.
Okay, but, speaking as a woman, we try to explain these issues nicely, with gentle terminology and a big helping of ‘not all of you, but some of you…’ and we get ignored, dismissed, belittled, or flat-out gaslit.
So, we try going for the shock value to get you to at least pay attention instead of dismissing what we say as background noise or ‘us silly little women worrying our silly little heads over nothing’. And then we get told we can’t talk like that, that it’s insulting, that no man would listen because we’re belittling them, that it ‘doesn’t foster discussion’.
Although at least you heard us say something so many of us take it as a small win…
So, honest question. How do we explain it to you, so we don’t offend you, but you actually hear us? Actually get an idea of what it means to be afraid of footsteps behind us when we go out at night? To get leered at when all we’re trying to do is get a good workout at the gym? To have men just take liberties, like touching us, grabbing us? To not want to mention that we are a woman online, especially in gaming circles, because of the sexist bullshit and dismissive attitudes that will inevitably show up and run us out of a group we just want to be in because we like the game, damnit?
To weigh the decision to even make a post like this, because I know it will be brigaded and will attract sexist jerks who will try to shout me down? Or even attract stalkers who will follow me across instances to harass me?
Please, tell me how. Because we want you to understand. We don’t want to chase people away from discussions. But it’s so hard, and gets so discouraging…
I just want to let you know that when women share their experiences, some men like me will process what they’ve read and understand, and not reply or anything. I don’t have anything to add. I’m probably part of a large silent group.
That was before the bear thing. I actually hadn’t even seen the bear meme.
When I read a woman share her experiences, I just get sad about it all and move to the next post in my Lemmy feed or whatever I’m reading on the internet.
I really appreciate that you made this post. Every top-level comment here is complaining about it being “rage bait” and that the question would “never foster productive discussion.” Why? Why aren’t men capable of seeing the scenario, recognizing why it’s necessary to say something like that, and getting over themselves just a little bit to get the point? The original question wasn’t even a “not all men” thing, there’s no actual reason to get mad about it enough to dismiss the dicussion. We have to be able to have a conversation where the other side is allowed to say something a tiny bit outside of our standards for what we want them to say, or we’ll never have a conversation at all.
The irony is, I am seeing a lot of productive discussion? Like high key? Alongside the standard rage, trolling and harassment of course (which should be banned).
I genuinely think that, if women actually stick around, this event could be a net positive for the Lemmyverse. What’s needed is just like several dozen deep breaths, some listening, and of course more effective moderation of the bad actors.
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