(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.
Yes, I know, you are objecting to my using the word ‘civility’ by taking it entirely out of the context of the post.
Here is the context including why I said it to the OP:
OP: "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."
Me: Every community I moderate has a civility rule, and shouting down or harassing women who are telling personal stories would be against those rules.
You: 🖕🏻🖕🏻🖕🏻🖕🏻
So yeah, I get that you are objecting to my using a single word when, taken out of context, means that I expect people to be polite all the time and not speak up when there’s some injustice. Of course, I didn’t mean that, as you can tell from what I literally said, or my comment history which you claimed to have read when I myself do that frequently, but you would much rather argue with something I never said or intended to say or even implied.
And your “proof” was me telling someone who was specifically telling me how I was a bad moderator that other people didn’t seem to agree which meant I was bragging about being a really good person, something you still refuse to acknowledge is not true.
Honestly, it seems like you just wanted to get angry at someone and I was an available target.
So, again, fine, I’m a shitty person.
I’m also a shitty person who’s going to keep a very close eye on you if you post in communities that I moderate in from now on because you just lie and lie and lie and I will not tolerate that where I moderate.
And that is my last post in this conversation.
And now you are abusing your power because you are calling me a “liar”
You do realize this is exactly what I am talking about with the civility rules and the inherent power imbalance?
I am objecting to the enforcement of civility rules, which are unnecessary given existing bigotry rules. You know that, but you’re pretending that’s not what I am saying. My proof was several well thought out arguments, and even some outside resources on the topic of civility and politeness rules being oppressive.
You ignored all of this.
Of course, the moment you start attempting to address the actual topic, you say “oh yah I won’t respond” 🙄 I have seen you do that before so I’m not surprised. I fucking knew you would do that if I addressed your pedantic assholery.
You’ll respond indefinitely to pedantics, but won’t engage in anything of substance, and then act self righteous and also… only clip the part of my comments that are 🖕🏻🖕🏻, ignoring the point I actually made. 🙄