Do you have any examples?

I hope this doesn’t sound aggressive, but unless you’re a man, you never had to venture very far on Lemmy to experience misogyny. If you ever mentioned you were a woman in any of the major instances and communities in any context except “I’m a woman and here’s what I don’t like about other women,” you were gonna get misogynistic replies and a shocking amount of downvotes. It’s just what happens when any internet community is dominated by a single gender I guess.
Lemmy’s always been great about almost every other social issue, except sometimes trans issues and neurodivergence if you stepped out of the communities for it, but women’s issues have always been an absolute train wreck around here.

Hypothetical question posed to women: would you rather be alone in the woods with a bear or a man? Many women said “bear”. Many men took that personally.

https://knowyourmeme.com/memes/man-or-bear-in-the-woods-question

I don’t have a particular Lemmy link, but here’s a general overview from knowyourmeme.

here you go :)

None of the situations I was talking about involved direct replies to women talking about their own experiences. Everything I’ve seen has essentially been “I’d choose the bear and you should feel ashamed.” If there are people making those kinds of comments in reply to women speaking about their experience and how they feel, I would agree with you that it is not acceptable. But 90% of what I see is blanket accusations or false dilemmas placing some viewpoint on me that I do not hold.

And in a way it does resemble “all lives matter.” But when there are people here directly saying that all men should be ashamed, that they are not safe to be around, and I have seen people saying in these threads that all men are rapists, it seems a little hard to see how that would make anyone understand or sympathize with the people making these comments. It starts to sound like “my feelings should take precedence over your existence” instead of “this is what I feel and why” or “this is how we can improve things.”

Its also ridiculous to me when it’s “but a man could rape me” but no “a bear could maul me.” If someone says that they have been SA’d or have otherwise had negative experiences, fine. I still think its a bit of a stretch to generalize it but I’m not out there saying “BuT nOt AlL mEn” to that.

It’s funny that you assumed that “enough people told me that” from one instance that this reminded me of. I didn’t victim blame them for experiencing sexism. I said that accusing innocent people who they’ve never interacted with and generalizing statements is ridiculous. Maybe be more specific on how my comment was “problematic” instead of some vague doublespeak.

Trolls gonna troll. And one of the links listed had the troll comment removed.

The meme itself is very… exploitable to the Angry Jacks of the world because of this pattern they exibit. They will bend themselves in knots in an attempt to resolve their emotional outbursts.

Ohhhh this is why my posts finally came out of the negatives.

Thank you!

A lot of people seem to think things like sexism are a personal failing or deliberate act as opposed to a systemic issue that affects us all.

you_are_not_immune_to_propaganda.jpg

Basically an overgeneralized meme representing the very true and valid fear women have towards strange men, where if they were stuck in a forest and had to choose to be stuck there with a strange man or a strange bear, many women would choose to be stuck with a bear, started cropping up on lemmy. Unfortunately this meme ALSO hit on the lived experience that a lot of men have had where they’ve grown up their entire lives feeling like they’ve been villainized and made to be the source of all societies ills, and so they voiced, with varying levels (and lack of) nuance why this meme upset them as it felt like a further villainization. This caused more friction than nuanced discussion, and more memes that more directly antagonized those who didnt appreciate the meme started cropping up, and now we are here

I appreciate that, friend. I hope my comment didn’t come off as flippant. I absolutely believe you’ve seen the shit you’re railing against, I just haven’t seen it (on Lemmy) myself.

Sorry, this meme is starting to get to me. SA Survivors ABSOLUTELY SHOULDN’T BE SILENCED, and I’m not surprised some of them actually are being done so which is appalling. I didnt realise it was you who was op of this thread, and now that I do I can absolutely believe you meant the actual literal cases of silencing, and not assumed cases.

Thank you for the detailed summary.

To add the final unfortunate details, there was a recent discussion on Lemmy where women were sharing their reasons for choosing bear, which involved sharing personal stories of SA. Unfortunately, many men responded in a toxic manner, causing some women to delete their posts or accounts. Very disturbing and this is what inspired me to make this post, as it is quite reminiscent of the Catholic church sweeping SA under the rug.

Of course Jesus is gonna say that.

*”Men telling women to say their experiences in a less antagonistic way is an affront to women.” FTFY

I am absolutely with you in agreeing that the bear meme is inflammatory. But this post is about women who are telling their stories about being SA’d and men dogpiling telling them to shut up. A very different matter that I haven’t seen in any other community.

This post might not be about you, but it is about a real thing that happened/is happening. Take a beat to internalize that :)

Ohhh, that issue. Thank you! Yeah, Lemmy silencing them is not at all cool. I really hate how we are needing to sensor or provide a trigger warning for practically everything anymore. Sure some things like SA, or self harm make sense. I’ve literally seen someone put a trigger warning on a kid friendly picture of a fucking fursuit, with hashtags specifically to attract other furries. The internet has become way too sensitive about everything, it’s so annoying sometimes