First, please be respectful in the comments. I have no idea what the topic was, but apparently it caused a lot of divide. I prefer just the claims and facts, backed by citations, and let me draw my own conclusions. I can think for myself. 😅
I’m curious because it seemed to have happened about a year ago, and then there were concerns of Lemmy being a worse place for women than Reddit.
I don’t really see that now. Granted, I’m new, and maybe it’s the specific communities I subscribed to, but I haven’t really seen much women-hating in posts or comments. If anything, I’ve seen a bias towards liberal viewpoints (many of which I personally agree with, but sometimes the justifications use poor reasoning and almost comes off as a bad defense or covert sabotage).
I’m hoping Lemmy changed for the better in the past year, and I’m not about to be side slammed with some misogyny. 🙏🏼
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SnotFlickerman nailed it, so I’ll just add that the “man or bear” saga taught me what a “scissor statement” is.
For me, that was the biggest revelation of the whole thing.
You had people encountering the same general words in the same general order, but understanding them to mean completely different things, and not being able to comprehend how anyone could disagree with them.
It was like a rehash of “the dress”, but not so whimsical.
It was really kind of distressing, the extent to which it laid bare (no pun intended) how poorly we’re actually communicating with each other online, even though it otherwise seems like we’re communicating more than ever.
Aaaaand then we just kinda shrugged that off and went back to internet as usual.
Yeah, I’m not engaging with the bear vs man debate, lol.
I’m more concerned about how some reacted to it than the debate itself.
I don’t know anything about its history on Lemmy and I haven’t really seen it discussed online at all. I guess I live under a rock.
The one place I have been exposed to it is in this amazing write-up, which I encountered via Mastodon some time ago. For me it provided a perfect introduction to the argument, and gave me a lot to think about even though I am by no means ignorant to feminism and my position as a man in society.
Highly recommend the read, both to men and women. It’s extremely well written.
Thanks for the read.
I have no idea what the topic was
The bear vs man story was a social commentary thing where women were trying to show men how dangerous and confusing men often seemed to be with an anecdote about whether or not they would want to run into a bear in the woods or a man in the woods.
Women tried to make clear that they would most often want to run into a bear, because they know what a bear will do. They don’t have to constantly second-guess themselves about the nature of the bear. The bear can be scary, but if you’re prepared and know what to do, you can make it out alive.
The opposite is how they feel with men. They feel like they cannot know a mans actual intentions in the woods and it could be anything from wanting to help her if she’s lost all the way to leading her to a rape/kill dungeon in the woods.
Thus, they would rather run into the bear where they can always know the bears intentions, and thus always know how to properly respond to the sight of the bear, they don’t ever need to second guess themselves on the intentions of the bear. Whereas they have to treat all men as though they are their worst iterations just to be safe, and that can be frustrating and confusing and they also know that it’s hurtful to treat men who may not be terrible that way. Yet they feel the need to do so to feel safe and secure and not be taking a risk.
Now, as for a specific conversation on Lemmy that lead people to believe Lemmy was worse for women than reddit. I couldn’t point you to that, but that also would not surprise me in the least. Lemmy overall does seem to skew heavily on the side of cisgender men. The blahaj lemmy is pretty small compared to others, for example, and probably hosts the largest number of genders other than cisgender men.
So honestly, I would not be shocked if there was a discussion around the “man vs bear” thing and that a lot of men on Lemmy had negative views on the whole thing instead of being able to see the other perspective. It seemed that men in general had a very negative view on the whole thing, probably because it made them feel personally attacked. Which was never the goal by women, but rather to just try to get men to hear them, really hear them on why they felt so sketched out about strange men approaching them in public.
I think a lot of it boils down to men having their own issues with women, especially men who try to be decent people. That can be seen in the response meme from men “Would you rather be emotionally vulnerable with a woman or with a tree?” The implication being that while men are often told to “open up” and “just talk about their feelings,” a large number of men have had very negative experiences when actually doing so. The number of women who think a man who cries is weak and will dump him is, well, too damn high. So emotional availability and vulnerability are things men feel that women want, and women indeed often say they want… but when faced with them, women will often get an “ick” and dump a guy over it. So men would rather be emotionally vulnerable with a tree so they don’t get judged for being emotionally vulnerable.
The real issue is that “man vs bear” or “woman vs tree” are entirely different issues which don’t really cross paths nor address the same issues or ideas. It leads to both sides sort of talking past each other instead of listening and hearing what the other side is actually saying. I think both of these positions have value to their respective genders, but both sides could do with a healthy amount of actually hearing the other side in this regard, instead of being dismissive.
Also, personal opinion, it says a lot that men also cannot feel safe being emotionally vulnerable with each other. Why would they go to a tree first instead of another man? Because other men will treat them as weak, too.
Whereas they have to treat all men as though they are their worst iterations just to be safe, and that can be frustrating and confusing and they also know that it’s hurtful to treat men who may not be terrible that way.
It’s more complicated than that. They have to treat men with unearned respect while planning for the worse. Treating man as a threat can make him a threat if he feels his masculinity is threaten he may act erratically.
To put it the other way, they don’t have to worry about managing the bear’s feelings.
Excellent point. Men becoming angry and lashing out verbally at women online because they felt attacked by the “man vs bear” issue neatly illustrates that point as well.
Too many people definitely took it personally, but I don’t think I ever saw it explained as well as you just did. All too often we just react, rather than constructively understand what was trying to be communicated
Thank you so much for explaining all of this. 🙏🏼
Yeah, Snot did a really good job. I’m actually saving this to forward on to other people. Thank you for making this post and thank you Snot for your reply.
Also, somewhat off-topic, but since you mentioned sharing important explanations to others, I have some that have worked for me. Feel free to disregard if they’re not helpful for you.
What I personally found persuasive when speaking with men is citing the research that 87% of rapes against women by men are explained by repeat offenders, which is 3% of men. That means 5 out of 6 rapes are done by a very, very small portion of men.
And it might explain some of the disconnect. 95% of men didn’t rape anyone, so they might be genuinely confused at the strong reaction.
I also explain that rape causes the equivalent of $122,461 in damages to the victims. This is just what is quantifiable and measurable via econometrics - the subjective damage is obviously much higher (and I am personally seeking reparations for much higher than this based on my own calculations).
5% odds with a random man might not initially seem that bad to some until I explain that it’s equivalent to rolling a nat 1 in D&D. That and you are literally rolling a 1d20 for each man you encounter, so unless you only meet at most 19 men in your lifetime, you’re expected on average to roll at least 1 nat 1.
I also explain that addressing rape culture benefits men, too. About 1 in 3 men are raped in their lifetimes, and about 40% of women blame victims and survivors (of all genders). Also, in the majority of states and countries across the world, it is not legally possible, either in theory or in practice, for cis men to be raped. That, and a lot of (anecdotal and not measured, but I’ll be measuring this one day) individuals, both men and women, believe that as long as no penetration happens, it’s not rape. This belief is not just used to the benefit of cis male rapists against cis female victims (“It’s not rape as long as I don’t penetrate her.”), but also been used against both cis male victims and lesbian cis female victims (by other cis women).
Often times, the counterarguments I receive are against the impressions left by bystander intervention training. I actually suspect that bystander intervention training is at best a profitable way to exploit funds for victims and survivors, and at worst a covert sabotage to create a bad defense for addressing rape culture. We don’t have good evidence yet that perpetrator-focused strategies actually work, and most strategies that have been rigorously evaluated are not only ineffective at preventing rapes, but sometimes increase false rape accusations against black men and decreases women’s empowerment by reinforcing harmful stereotypes. Please, please stop funding, promoting, or supporting bystander intervention training, or at least fund a randomized controlled trial (RCT) of a bystander intervention training program to measure its impact (and it would give strong, nearly irrefutable evidence in support of it if it actually works). As stated earlier, 95% of men don’t even rape, so the training doesn’t do anything for them. And for the 3% repeat offenders who explain 87% of rapes, well, I, and many others, suspect that serial rapists are probably not going to stop just because some training to tells them to. That, and ~80% of rapes are done by people you know, in private or secluded spaces. It’s very rare for some random man to jump out of a bush and rape you then and there. Bystanders can only intervene if they are actually nearby.
I don’t have the names of research papers memorized off the top of my head, but all of these are Google-able.
I did a lot of edits trying to recollect all the discussions I’ve personally had. Hopefully these cover 80% of those conversations.
Haha, no need to thank me!
It was more out of survival instincts and gauging my environment.
You hit it pretty perfectly.
One thing I would not agree is the unusual prevalence of cis men on lemmy. I saw many more trans discussions on lemmy than any other platform. At least when I joined the amount of posts in my timeline from blahaj was so high that I had to mute it after a while. It looked to me that there’s no other topic of discussion on lemmy than Linux and trans rights. And while I support trans people with all my heart, it got just boring and repetitive after a week, it’s not a topic that I want to fill my free time with.
I’m confused, can you provide some context?
I know about the bear vs man thing that went viral for awhile- “Would you rather be alone in the woods with a bear or a man?”, but I haven’t ever seen it in a Lemmy vs Reddit context.
Unfortunately, I don’t even know what the argument is, so I’d need you to provide context.
I’m just trying to understand how irrational or aggressive Lemmy is towards women.
Thank you for describing the bear vs man thing to me. So it was basically a question posted on social media, and then the reactions to the question (and maybe others’ comments) was divisive?
I’m just trying to understand how irrational or aggressive Lemmy is towards women.
While I also don’t know:
- Lemmy tends to be geeky. While I don’t know the stats, I wouldn’t be surprised if it’s very male dominated
- different Lemmy servers have different social tendencies. If there are some worth not federating because of toxicity, it’s likely some of that toxicity makes women uncomfortable
Thank you for this.
For some reason, I thought Lemmy had more women specifically because of how Reddit treats women. 😅
Still, it’s not like people are incapable of understanding others who are different from them. I’m hopeful the men here will listen to reason.
Since I have no clue what argument you’re talking about I definitely can’t provide context.
I think maybe we’re all confused lmao.
But yeah, you summed up the original context pretty well. It was a TikTok trend asking women if they’d rather be alone in the woods with a bear or a man. A lot of people, primarily women, basically pointed and said “see how much women don’t trust the average man.” A lot of men pointed at it and said, “see how much women hate men.” And it was a whole gender argument for awhile. I just sort of thought it was all around sad and depressing.
LOL I hear you on that. 😭
Ah, I see. 😅 Thank you for explaining it. 🙏🏼
I don’t think there was ever a serious systematic concern that Lemmy was a worse place then Reddit for women but it was that viral thing about who you’d rather come across in the woods a man or a bear.
The main person accusing Lemmy of being a terrible place still posts here constantly so take that as you’d like.
They asked Women if they’d rather be alone in the woods and come across a bear, or a man; and many of them chose bear because they thought men were untrustworthy.
It’s more an expression of misandry than misogyny. Men are defaulted in many minds to be violent sexual predators.
If you’re lost in the woods, would you rather run into a bear, or a man who is 10% larger than you and wants to have sex with you?
Hopefully this rephrasing of the question helps you understand the answer women tend to give a little better
You’re not going to get dinner and a movie out of a bear.
A viewpoint from someone who would choose the bear:: I don’t think all men are by default violent sexual predators. It’s much more about the fear that we won’t be believed.
Nobody questions whether you wanted to be attacked by a bear. Nobody makes the case that the bear just made a mistake and we don’t want to ruin his future. Nobody suggests that you lead the bear on then changed your mind. It behooves us to be wary of being vulnerable with men until we have more information about the specific man we’re engaging with because of things go sideways there’s a good chance we’ll be blamed.
A viewpoint from someone who is a man and not a sexual predator:: this statement is so incendiary because the odds of being mauled to death by a bear you meet are so high, while the odds of being sexually assaulted by a man you meet are so low.
As someone who doesn’t live somewhere that has bears I don’t really know how it works, at first glance the phrase “come across a bear” implies a certainty of a revenant style bear fight, but I suppose if you know something about bear behavior can identify the type of bear maybe it’s not a big deal?
Alternatively, how many encounters between lone women and lone men in the woods result in sexual assault? There’s some places in my area where people walk daily. There would be dozens of such encounters, and IDK the “sexual assault rate” but it would be a big deal if someone had been raped in the woods. Notwithstanding unreported assaults, I don’t think it’s something that’s happened? I’m guessing but I wouldn’t be surprised if the rate is less than 1 encounter in a million.
The person you’re responding to entirely missed the point and the accusation of misandry is misguided
Sadly, the reverse has come to be true for a lot of men.
Lemmy isn’t safe for anyone, no matter their gender.
Is internet
Not safe
Come to my old neighborhood if you want to find out what “not safe” is, none of my friends have ever been stabbed on lemmy, three of my friends have been stabbed around the neighborhood, and two robbed at gunpoint. The internet can’t hurt you.
I know what you mean, but stuff like this always sounds so strange to me after living in actual dangerous places lol.
You must have a lot of bears in your old neighborhood.
Every time I open Lemmy, I’m incredibly fearful of what pearl-clutching material is going to be thrust in my face, so I come back over and over
It’s also full of unapologetic Linux users.
Is that something I should be apologizing for?
Depends on the approach. All the Linux users that jump into a post asking for advice specifically for Windows and feel the need to scream “LINUX” in people’s faces are obnoxious and can fuck off.
Don’t forget the ones who tell you its super easy to switch to and then you try and it turns out it there are about a dozen caveats and it might not even work reliably on about 80% of PCs on the market.
LINUX
The horror!
We did it! 🎆
