(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.
Well, all men are being accused of this. Rightfully so. From my point of view, the scenario illustrates that a woman has to consider a man that she doesn’t know to be at least as dangerous to her own personal safety as a bear and act accordingly. Even men she knows well may still attack her.
Statistically, the odds of being attacked in any particular scenario may be small, but they’re definitely not zero. Similar to encountering a bear. Bear spray is a deterrent in both scenarios.
See the issue? Dehumanization and prejudice on the basis of immutable traits is wrong - both factually and morally
Not sure what your point is, men of any ethnicity attack and rape women.
And men of color and immigrants are disproportionately killed and treated like animals for it
Minorites are mistreated for sure. And sexual assault is just one of many excuses given for that mistreatment. Emmitt Till was falsely accused and brutally murdered. That doesn’t change the fact that women are assaulted by men even within their own ethnicity and social stratus.
I’m assuming that your point is that there ought to be a consistent and fair application of justice for perpetrators of assault, but you seem to be getting away from the point of this thread.
The point is that dehumanizing men will have a disproportionate impact on working class men of color and immigrants. Which are groups that are already seen as animalistic and inherently dangerous. Hence the drastically elevated rates of state sanctioned murder of black men, for instance.
When we dehumanize men, the impact on wealthy white men in gated suburban communities is minimal. However the impact on working class men of color from vulnerable populations is significant. The impact on national minority groups is significant.
Which means this “meme” is a dogwhistle. It is barely disguised hate speech that amplifies violence against already persecuted groups by perpetuating the notion that these “animalistic” peoples are more dangerous than wild animals.
This is the same thing Trump does when he calls immigrants rapists and murderers who are poisoning the blood of America. Except this meme isn’t dumb enough to specifically talk about Mexican men - instead, it is making the same point implicitly.
This attitude will perpetuate the culture of violence that targets national minority groups who are already othered. It isn’t funny or cute. It’s a rightwing dogwhistle and it’s dangerous
Being at risk of being attacked by a sexual predator is neither funny nor cute.
The right-wing has never been an advocate for protecting women, so the leap you’ve made here is rather spectacular.
Nothing about this has anything to do with protecting women.
It is about using the perceived fragility and patriarchal ownership mentality associated with “our” women to justify increases in crackdowns on men of color and immigrants.
This is just white tears causing black scars all over again. Except this time it’s an astroturfed campaign by fascists to maintain and increase societal fear of men who are Other
No idea what this is referencing. But I agree that there is nothing cute about fascistic dogwhistles