Hi comrades, want to give you all an informal update on the discussions around the site’s misogyny problems that’ve been happening over the last several days. I wanna make sure you know that the admin/mod team has seen all of that discourse and we’ve been actively discussing solutions in the matrix mod chat. We’re taking this shit very seriously and acknowledge that we haven’t used a heavy enough hand on misogynistic rhetoric. As some of you saw we nuked that cheating thread from a couple weeks ago and handed out temp bans to the most egregious offenders. Idk how that was allowed to run it’s course but we apologize for that oversight. We’re going to do better.

We’ve come up with some ideas for how to improve this part of the site culture and we want to get suggestions from y’all as well, since the alarm was sounded on this by our beautiful c/traa posters to begin with. Our ideas so far include:

  1. A zero-tolerance policy towards any even remotely misogynistic/patriarchal posts or comments, as too much has slipped through the cracks on that, establishing a clear protocol for bans for violating rules against misogyny, and ideally tracking repeat offenders in a way that makes deciding a course of action easy when they reoffend.

  2. Uphold TC69 thought by starting up a book club (and hopefully more to follow) on feminist theory and encouraging mass participation, particularly from the he/him’s on the site. “The Will to Change” by bell hooks has been suggested by multiple people as a great starting point but please feel free to suggest any other works.

  3. Relaunching /c/menby with a trusted educated mod team and a specific focus on countering mainstream narratives about masculinity, relationships and sex that breed reactionary, patriarchal attitudes

  4. Encouraging [namely femme] participation in /c/womenby and taking steps to revitalize that sub as an excellent source of discussion on feminism and intersectionality

  5. Holding another mod drive to get more folks into mod positions in our communities who can help weed out reactionary attitudes

  6. Encouraging users to use the report button often on any post that seems even remotely sus, with the promise that no one’s going to be punished for “report abuse” for reporting posts in obvious good faith

Please let me know your thoughts on the above or any other ideas you have for making the site better, safer and more inclusive for our femme comrades. Once we’ve fully hammered out plans and updated policy we plan to make an announcement post highlighting these changes for the whole userbase. Thank you all for being here and being who you are feminism trans-heart

  • niph [she/her]@hexbear.netEnglish
    49·
    1 month ago

    I just read the thread and even though most comments are deleted you can get the flavour of what people were saying. The way that some people are almost gleeful about the prospect of a woman being physically endangered is gross.

    I think there might be a difficult discussion to be had about whether there’s a link between some of the more general politically violent rhetoric / fantasising on here and an implication that any violence against perpetrators of perceived wrongs is justified. I would hope comrades are able to distinguish between supporting resistance movements and the violence that’s necessary for the overthrow of capitalism on the one hand, and violence against individuals perceived to have committed some personal moral infraction on the other. But Western and especially Anglo culture is extremely individualistic, and that has created the framework through which many users on this site see the world.

    I’m not sure what solutions there are to this, but some self-reflection is likely the place to start.

      • Yor [she/her]@hexbear.netEnglish
        28·
        1 month ago

        Feels like there was some real weird trad vibes in the “doesn’t he have a right to know his partner is cheating” comments. Maybe I’m reading into it a bit too much, but when the context is someone feeling a moral duty to talk guy to guy about what someone’s wife is doing behind his back, there’s an uncomfortable patriarchal vibe that was so gross to me

          • imogen_underscore [it/its, she/her]@hexbear.netEnglish
            9·
            1 month ago

            unfortunately I couldn’t point to one piece, I don’t think he has anything so focused on it, he talks about it a bit in Stalin which I read recently. mostly about the western left’s fetishization of defeat and how for a lot of folks the only good communists/communist projects are the martyred ones and the existing socialist states must have betrayed communism somehow. like applying a moral goodness to defeat and failure and so conversely AES must be somehow morally corrupted to have survived. I think he also touches on like how that fetishization extends to poverty and economic struggle, like how in some vulgar conceptions of communism we’re all reduced to the poorest level or whatever.

      • HamManBad [he/him]@hexbear.netEnglish
        11·
        1 month ago

        At the same time, my internalized Christian moralism gives me strong pacifist tendencies. Calls to political violence are the only time on this site where my hackles go up. These guys clearly got a different Christian upbringing than me

        Edit: I think men in general should be more pacifist. Let the marginalized lead the way when defensive violence is necessary. A bunch of dudes clamoring for “righteous justice” is always a red flag for me, even if they’re communists

        • starkillerfish [she/her]@hexbear.netEnglish
          2·
          1 month ago

          I dont claim that using Christian morals is inherently problematic. The issue is that western politics and culture use a specific idea of “the guilty (sinful) must be punished” to attack marginalized people. Even if you grow up non-Christian in US, you will still interact with it and to some extent internalize this “axiom”. And it is not easy to change fundamental beliefs like that. I’ve talked to ex-Christians who still used a Christian-lite framework for their worldview. And that’s why I’m not necessarily advocating for everyone to change immediately to be “pure” Marxists. It’s just important to understand where your beliefs come from.