Unpopular Opinion

6335 readers

60 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

Rooki@lemmy.world

JonsJava@lemmy.world

admiralpatrick@lemmy.world

lemann@lemmy.world

ptz@dubvee.org

319

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

submitted 6 months ago* (last edited 6 months ago) by spujb@lemmy.cafe to c/unpopularopinion@lemmy.world

576 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

[–] ArcaneSlime@lemmy.dbzer0.com 12 points 6 months ago

Idk, to use another lemming's comment from this very post,

My proverbial beef isn't the pointing out of how manny men are predators and that the risksfor women are non-zero; my problem more specifically is that the meme stacks handily on top of the already vexing racial profiling I deal with as a black man who's had false allegations leveled in the past and lost jobs because of the weaponization of this fear. I have already spent damn near a half century being presumed some kind of feral Mandingo rape beast purely for existing while black. The presumption of interest in all of these women like a scene out of Kentucky Fried Movie gets really old and they get super vindictive when rejected.

To me it does seem analogous to the whole racist "black people are 12% of the population but commit 50% of the crime" thing, in that while it is true it is still racist to assume every black person will commit a crime against you and use it as a basis to fear them. Furthermore white people also commit plenty crime and get away with it, padding the numbers, and many women also get away with coercing/forcing men to have sex because nobody believes or gives a fuck about male victims (trust me, am one, 2 diff women,) so it often also goes unreported. On that note actually in many places in the us "rape" requires penetration, so if a woman forces you to penetrate her "you must've liked it" and no court case for you!

Personally I think it'd be prudent not to vilify an entire gender while also excluding victims from said gender.

Hell I understand though, at least with the bear I'd only be brutally mauled instead of forced to have sex with it, and 2/infinity women I've met have forced me to have sex with them so imo all women could, I'll take the bear too.