Unpopular Opinion

6289 readers

124 users here now

Welcome to the Unpopular Opinion community!

How voting works:

Vote the opposite of the norm.

If you agree that the opinion is unpopular give it an arrow up. If it's something that's widely accepted, give it an arrow down.

Guidelines:

Tag your post, if possible (not required)

If your post is a "General" unpopular opinion, start the subject with [GENERAL].
If it is a Lemmy-specific unpopular opinion, start it with [LEMMY].

Rules:

1. NO POLITICS

Politics is everywhere. Let's make this about [general] and [lemmy] - specific topics, and keep politics out of it.

2. Be civil.

Disagreements happen, but that doesn’t provide the right to personally attack others. No racism/sexism/bigotry. Please also refrain from gatekeeping others' opinions.

3. No bots, spam or self-promotion.

Only approved bots, which follow the guidelines for bots set by the instance, are allowed.

4. Shitposts and memes are allowed but...

Only until they prove to be a problem. They can and will be removed at moderator discretion.

5. No trolling.

This shouldn't need an explanation. If your post or comment is made just to get a rise with no real value, it will be removed. You do this too often, you will get a vacation to touch grass, away from this community for 1 or more days. Repeat offenses will result in a perma-ban.

Instance-wide rules always apply. https://legal.lemmy.world/tos/

founded 1 year ago

MODERATORS

[email protected]

286

Lemmy is a worse platform for women than Reddit was (lemmy.cafe)

submitted 5 months ago* (last edited 5 months ago) by [email protected] to c/[email protected]

552 comments fedilink hide all child comments

(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.

you are viewing a single comment's thread
view the rest of the comments

[–] [email protected] 17 points 5 months ago (1 children)

Yeah at this point I don’t care about the bear thing. So two weeks ago. I do however care about the abject harrassment that happened. Thank you for your perspective.

[–] [email protected] 16 points 5 months ago (1 children)

Sure. However, the two aren’t unrelated. Not that it justifies the harassment you’ve seen (which as mentioned mods are pretty solid on most instances but reports help them a lot). Given what shitshow it turned into it’s clear that more conversations around the topic are needed. I think those type of people will still pop their head up. When they do, if the entire conversation isn’t already a shitfight because of how it was initiated, these type will be easier to identify and ban. Focusing solely on the outcome and ignoring how we got here only ensures it will be repeated. Lemmy is growing still, there will be challenges on the way.

[–] [email protected] 16 points 5 months ago

I definitely hope the bear thing isn’t the last time SA is discussed on Lemmy. With such a male heavy population, it’s honestly a tremendous opportunity to expose a huge chunk of men to basic feminist theory. Fight the good fight homie 💖