my "shut the fuck up and listen" strategy continues to pay untold dividends

I'd like to kick off a little discussion since this comment about the way Hexbear often assumes the reason women aren't having more children is that material conditions for them are poor, when it actually is the opposite from @Othello@hexbear.net has stuck with me and it's a really important discussion that wasn't really properly addressed/developed in that thread (in fact, many commenters just kinda dismissed the point love made with the exact kinda rote vulgar materialism Othello was arguing against in the first place!)

Maybe it deserves its own thread, maybe the admins/mods should take a look at what happened there, IDK.

Wow redfash tankie mods won't even let boys be boys

Personally speaking, to give my own insight into another subject that others have discussed in this thread, I am all for a neutral (meaning neither specifically masculine nor feminine-aligned) non-binary space.

Seeing cisheteronormativity and binarism rife on every corner of the internet is deeply exhausting and honestly makes me feel like I'm "broken" for existing in a way that is far beyond any of it.

Not all trans people are non-binary either, so I can't say that I'm 100% confident that enbyphobia/transmedicalism would never "leak," even if just a little bit, into this community.

Truthfully, as inclusive as Hexbear can seem, I don't give any unambiguous trust to anyone who is cis, hetero, white, or neurotypical. The fact that this thread needed to be made in the first place can show you why.

"Leftists" will go mask off and spew hatred towards someone like me when it no longer benefits them to pretend that they're not hateful bigots.

woah those are great changes!

very based mod team

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

ayy now i have no report button anxiety

Thanks for trying to do better, Hexbear.

Bit idea: transitioning to avoid being purged from hexbear

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.

wow im glad i have no idea wtf happened

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full support on pushing back against misogyny, that thread was a dumpster fire and made me for like a week.

Great responsive action! This is why I'd choose the bear.

hell yeah ban their asses

looks at own pronouns

aw fuck

edit: i liked when tcsex# made us all read, should do it again

Uphold TC69 thought

Unlimited Purges on reactionaries

(121 New)

i've seen several comments on this thread to the effect of "pls explain to me why the cheating thread was bad so i can self crit"

and i have misgivings about this. this is not the place for it. i'm glad they're open to reconsidering their perspective and the poorly named comm for deconstructing this shit has been resurrected and that's probably a good place to start. but reopening it in the post about the misogyny purge just kinda derails the actual discussion and expects the people misgyny is directed at to do all the work of educating them.

Count me as another interested in the reading group, lately I feel like I've been too careless with how I talk about issues surrounding women.

in continuation of my previous comment about people asking to be educated in this thread, specifically over the cheating thread. previous comment here. i realised i forgot to add this earlier

i genuinely find it kinda disturbing that people who presumably consider themselves feminists, in a very leftist space like this, need to have this explained to them. yeah it's much better to ask (in the right context, not this thread) than not to know. but i can't help see it as a significant failure in empathising with women and others marginalised by patriarchy, and understanding how the violence of patriarchy affects our existence. so maybe you need to work on developing that empathy, and i mean this regardless of the gender of the posters in question. people of any gender can make that mistake.

in the context of the cheating thread, the question is not about whether cheating is okay, or whether the husband deserved to know. yeah, if you're gonna be monogamous that's a commitment you should take seriously like any other you make in a relationship. but it has nothing to do with that, not really. the question is,

that supeceeds any concern about the ethics of cheating.

While we're at it, can we also ban loss: the longest running miscarriage meme?

I think it would have been funnier to have a bot do a temp ban of 1 day for literally every user that doesnt have a femme pronoun set on their profile

Unlimited The Will To Change bookclubs on the hexbear world, fuck yeah. Whole post looks solid at a glance, but particularly

with the promise that no one's going to be punished for "report abuse" for reporting posts in obvious good faith

I am a complete dweeb with an inability to read tone and never hit the Report button without sweating profusely first, so I really dig this.

again, the only time "australia" stays winning is when we completely miss what sounds like some absolutely atrocious posting

all these points sound pretty good and more than fair. any cis dudes (which I am) taking issue with this or any similar actions, and anyone who receives a mere temp ban over these rules and gets mad instead of taking time to self-crit, should probably fucking heem themselves

third time's the charm on c/menby i guess.

good overall but these gendercomms need posters, and posters need content and i don't know where they'll get it: recurring womens' issues stuff is mostly transmisogyny and doom about christofascists regression while recurring mens' issues stuff is ???

Maybe this is too complicated, but I like the idea of a formal process for people to educate themselves and self crit. Maybe first time an offender catches a temp ban and needs to reflect and post upon returning identifying what unexamined biases led them into error in the first place? Just a thought

I missed the cheating thread, just read some of this one and through the modlog, and it seems...so easy not to be like this. I'm both dissapointed that this even happened, and happy to be somewhere that gives a shit enough to go hard once it did.

!nonbinary@hexbear.net

Fantastic post and it's really heartening to see such a positive response to it

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.

Audiobook available on TankieTube here

Just so as I am clear. What was the discourse that was going off rails so I know what kinda stuff to avoid doing in the future.

very cool and based

ANTI HE/HIM AKTION

Be afraid, he/hims

These ideas sound solid

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thank you for all your efforts

Wild to me that anyone would even come here and be misogynistic, this is one of the few safe spaces left for femmes online.

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Fantastic to hear! All points are great, and as a he/him the book club sounds fun and dearly needed, I'd love to participate.

One idea I had was a megathread safe space like what we have for the trans and EM/POC threads, would that be something people would want? I've seen lots of love for the megas from our comrades here, but I'm a he/him so I'm staying in my lane, lol. Just an idea I had and felt would be cool, with our current demographics there would obviously be overlap with the trans mega, but the benefit of maintaining a safe space free from he/hims in a megathread form seems like it would help

We have the best mods and admins, fantastic work!

Side note: if anyone has seen me say reactionary misogynistic garbage on this site please tell me so I can self-crit

Wow. I saw that thread and was like what the fuck! I couldn’t believe people were agreeing with op I didn’t bother to participate and have been busy. Glad this is moving towards something more productive.

The plan looks good, but please follow it up by reaching out to online spaces with more women and nonbinary people.

Any improvement will slowly backslide if there aren't people directly affected by the issue there to spot things, in enough numbers that nobody is getting bummed out by constantly being the one having to report stuff.

edit: this was phrased very poorly before and ashinadash was right to call me out

This is good! I have some thoughts about the wo/menby split which have also been brought up by other nonbinary people in this thread, so I will leave them to speak on that. I only hope we can eventually address other blind spots with similar urgency in what I consider to be one of the only tolerable forums left on the English-speaking net; covid minimization outside of the comm for it is one that particularly infuriates me, overall ableism that is not to do with neurodivergence is another -- but this is one necessary step of many, and I'm happy to see it.

Thank you to our admins for upholding TC69 thought.

Ya’ll rule.

TC69 thought

Good list of action. Number 1 needs to be adopted sitewide.

I'm glad this is getting the attention it should, for a more casual user that thread was easy to miss.

Reminder for everyone to read over the hexbear.net code of conduct.

hexbear.net/code_of_conduct

no idea what happened but i'm glad you're taking action, it sounds like something absolutely cringe was posted. i really need to read that book at some point

Thanks to the mods for taking the problem serious and doing something about it! Thanks to those who pointed out the issue in the first place!

Let's make Hexbear a safe and inclusive space for everyone.

This is awesome and I am totally going to the gulag.

I somehow missed the most problematic threads but full support for anti-misogynist action and doing reeducation (reading group).

excellent post and plan going forward

Admins continuing to outdo my expectations. Thank you for such a quick response to people's concerns.

based on the timing of this i feel like the gender demos survey had a hand in these measures being implemented too, right?

Greatly appreciated and very based

Thank you mods/admins <3

I have a stupid but serious question which comes from not being aware of the background and having a weak understanding of misogyny in general:

Are ligma jokes misogynistic?

E: cheating thread is pretty screwed up.

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based

What did I miss? I didn't see the cheating thread so I'm ootl on what happened

Great ideas. I love how this is being addressed.

I might have some bookclub ideas and could suggest some reading also on the whole body politic area and feminist reading on that. Been focusing on some of this stuff in my studies, especially on things like gender, body & biomedicine.

Thank you, Admins, for addressing issues that are just normal and expected on other websites

based

thanks for this post, pretty timely response to the recent discourse which is appreciated. don't have any deeper thoughts rn but yea thanks admins for acknowledging and being on top of this! the suggestions look good too:)

Jeez, I’m never around for when shit really goes off around here.

Uncritical support to our mods and admins, unlimited banhammers on all misogynists. May all comrades partake in self-reflection to identify and weed out misogynistic beliefs and attitudes within ourselves that lead us to hurt and exclude, intentionally or otherwise.

As for the book mentioned (The Will to Change), I personally didn't finish it the last time I read it after it was recommended here; I got about a third of the way through before I lost interest, mainly because it felt sort of basic to me. But we're all at different points in our journeys, and I'm sure there will be still be things I can take away from it. Plus, if we're having a large sitewide book club it'll be easier to stick with so that I can participate in the discussion threads!

how do the zero tolerance rules apply to he/him admins?

it appears my speculation was correct. very happy to see this thank you admins!!!

The bigger and bigger dominoes meme where the small domino says "should I tell this woman's husband that she's cheating on him with me?" and the biggest domino is a Hexbear mod with a scalpel between my legs

The perusall repository has a ton of feminist books and I can sort through a few more. I think it might also help with accountability if folks have a place to read and immediately ask questions or hosting a "Reading Night" in hextube with some coffee and chill vibes, and a "Discussion Night".

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Can you have someone ping me for the bookclub when that gets off the ground? I need to do more group activities like that. It's just good even as self care, because you get to reflect on the conditions on the ground as you use feminist theory to look at them. Idk, I just that sort of self criticism would be good as part of that sort of process to make me a better person.

Based

The woke loony left horseshoe-theory-fascist mods of this site have finally gone too far. What, I can't go into any comm I please and post "women are the lesser sex and should be subjugated and ruled over by men for all time" without getting banned? This is ridiculous. Come on, I thought you guys were cool.

(no, but really, this is great. Women hold up half the sky)

Unironically just ban all cis men. That would solve most of it

Does that cheating thread still exist? I didn't see it, but I saw it described in these comments. As someone who has been in the position of being in love with a woman who was hiding an already-existing boyfriend, my gut reaction was "fuck her, the guy should know that she's cheating and shame on her for leading another person on while she's already in a relationship." I'd like to see the context and hear the arguments for why telling the boyfriend is a bad idea so I can do some self crit if necessary, because purging misogyny is always a good thing.

Are "femme" and "woman" synonymous here? I've noticed a few times on this site.

Extremely annoying misandrist drivel continues to fester, I see.

I was gone for a few days, wa happen?

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That was all I needed to see here. Women over trans. Lmao it really is a full misogyny/misandry circle.