Conversation ongoing over there, inviting anyone who wants to participate to please consider sharing their thoughts if they are willing to. If you wanna post in the original thread from your instance copy and paste the link into your instances search panel
As I said in the thread, if you aren't comfortable posting feel free to DM me here or on matrix and I can post anonymously for you.
I was always aware of the subtle misogyny on Reddit, however, it wasn't until the end did I understand how truly bad it was. All it took was one post and 24 hours for me to see how awful some men can be.
I made a post to a collapse support subreddit detailing how I, a man, had been treated by other men in the workplace. I also explained how the men I have been surrounded by were sexist, racist, homophobic and intolerant to anything "unmanly." I also went on to explain how the everyday treatment of women was not much different than how leaders and businessmen of the world acted. The only difference being the scale of which their actions affect other people. I also provided a few personal examples of how men manipulate women in every subtle way possible. My main motivation for making the post was finding out a former co-worker of mine was attempting to sext with a legal but considerably younger person we both knew. He is married and has two young girls with his wife.
The comments section was... interesting. I received many comments from women who had agreed with me, acknowledged what I said or expressed gratitude for simply being acknowledged from what I posted. Some men and wives of men also commented saying they experienced similar treatment in a bunch of different fields of work. Those comments made me satisfied with the post.
The other half of the comments all claimed I was promoting hate and that my post was hate speech. There was no middle ground or attempt at discussion. Worse, once they caught on that the subreddit moderator was a woman, they descended into her dm's with hate filled messages, threats and declaring that she was supporting hate speech against men.
The harrasment was so much that my post was removed by the moderator but she did reach out to me beforehand. It was quite clear to me that my post had unintentionally affected her mental health. We had an understandable back and forth and I don't blame her for taking an unfortunate step in trying to protect her community she worked so hard to build. A community she needed for herself as well.
The last thing she did say was going forward, she would be more heavy handed with the bans and to be less tolerant of intolerance.
Unfortunately, I quit reddit following the API changes so I don't know how that subreddit or moderator has progressed over the past months.
I think stronger moderation for such vulnerable communities is a necessity. I also think being a moderator is also a nightmarish position to be in as well. I imagine seeing countless negative or awful comments would have a lingering effect on a moderators mental health. Even worse when it's a passion project.
I have been trying to be more vocal on Lemmy when I see men attacking feminism and feminist groups. I also try to come from an empathetic and understanding place because matching hostility seems to end the comment thread in flames from my observations.
Unfortunately it seems my comments get ignored while women commenting under the same post will have their comments picked a part letter by letter from hostile men. It seems their goal is simply bullying women.
I wish there was a simpler way to filter out the hate and intolerance but when dealing with so many people, how do you even know where to start? Fighting complexity is a nightmare and people are fucking complex.
I appreciate what you're doing and I'm sorry you had to deal with a bunch of hateful people. The way to fight it is by doing what you're doing right now. No one person can solve a problem so large, but reach person that decides to roll up their sleeves and do something about it makes the problem just a little smaller. 💜
I rarely comment with this (Beehaw) handle, because so many men see an opposing point of view as an excuse to school me on being nice. It's NOT MEAN to refuse to accept someone telling you what you meant. It's NOT MEAN to have an opinion while female. And if it is mean, then I'm happy to be mean.