(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.
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”
