Neither side in this sex war seems willing to admit that both parties are deeply behaviorally flawed in terms of operating within an (at least in rhetoric) equitable society we all claim to want with one another.
I think step zero would be for both men and women to admit that both are deeply flawed in their engagement with one another, acknowledge both are trying to operate within sociocultural environments we are evolutionarily unprepared for, and therefore shouldn’t expect perfection or even competency from the other, so we can work to bridge the massive empathy deficit between us.
But since healing doesn’t trend on social media or in culture like vitriol, insult, or indignation, carry on.
On y va to the bookshop for a new thesaurus.
I just want it to stop, it could have been productive but there’s just too much vitriol now
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I appreciate that I am not alone in having a better take
Yeah, don’t know about that, buddy. “Leftists are male-exclusive subtle fascists” reeks of “I have no clue about left wing ideology and my analysis of the world around me is based on a total lack of knowledge and a total lack of actual analysis”, but sure. Could be that leftists just do not respond well to you in particular.
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I do not tap into culture wars at all because that is some manufactured bullshit meant to take away focus on class struggle in the US, a country I am not even from. Feminism is not a product of this, but rather of the very same ideals that lay the foundation of socialism. Men abuse women in a multitude of ways all the time, and it is not close to symmmetric, which of course does not mean I refute the very real consequences of the converse.
Having the right positionsTM on the issues you bring in at the end, does not make me respect your disjointed post above.
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Lol, you must be one of the guys that get offended by this or the bear meme. If you think stuff like this attacks all men or you directly, or that women have done wrong to men even 1% of what sexism and men violence has done to them you just need to close lemmy for an hour and read a bit. And im a man in case you were wondering, i just dont have my head inside my own ass.
Have a happy Wednesday.
i will, maybe you will too when you understand there is no sex wars and its just 50% of the population just wanting to feel safe.
i think you might… etymologically, be able to uh classify that statement as a “sex war”
like i get what we’re saying but there also kind of is, isn’t there?
I hope you have a happy Wednesday regardless of your strongly held beliefs, unless one of them is wanting to have bad/unhappy Wednesdays, in which case I apologize for my transgression.
Oh my, the strongly held beliefs that everyone should be equal and feel safe around other people.
I too believe it is our society’s responsibility to house our massive homeless population, our society’s greatest victims, so they aren’t quite literally dying of exposure and police harassment for the crime of continuing to breathe while destitute in our names, as that is clearly unsafe, and is a tangible thing we could do something about quickly by nationalizing our swaths of unused office space owned by predatory profiteers actively, not hypothetically, committing continuous large scale harm on society with their greed to be converted into basic housing units.
Im in. Let’s be the change! They’re dying needlessly right now, slowly and torturously, deprived of basic human needs, in tent cities in every population center in America. We care so much about the safety of others, and would be helping a diverse population of men and women living in objectively highly unsafe conditions as we type, so surely that’s a slam dunk endeavor as that is the explicit goal, right? Pleading for change to increase people being and feeling safe?
Sure, im all in for that, it is part of being communist you know? But at the same time that doesnt mean i treat the problems inherent to being a woman in our society as minor problems. ;) Or are you saying that because there is homeless people and police harassment we should leave racism, sexism and other problems undiscussed? hmmmm, seems to me like you are trying to say that a big part of the earths population doesnt have the right to fight for a better life because there is people in worse conditions.
It certainly is remarkable that every time someone who Totally Isn’t Sexist and is Just Trying To Be Reasonable is on the topic of sexism, it will never take them long to go for ‘well other people are suffering more so sexism comparatively isn’t a real problem’.
PS: whatever role you think I have in “gender wars” you’re probably wrong.
amen.
but that would require taking sex out of the equation. sex is what drives all of this misery on both sides. it’s much easier to empathize with people you don’t want to fuck, rather than seeing them as a in terms of sexual social dynamics, where those who are sexual desirable on both sides are given leeway in behaviour that is intolerable for those who are not sexual desirable.
I would absolutely agree with you, except for all the other lines humans are always eager to draw between ourselves to the point of undermining our own brothers and sisters. Race, religion, political affiliation, economic opinions, holy shit the lines we draw for socioeconomic status, these aren’t random divisions, we seek them out and make bright red angry lines, it is in our nature to draw lines in the sand between ourselves, a remnant of when there literally wasn’t enough to go around and only some survived a harsh winter.
To me, again, the first step would for us all to recognize this divisive nature within ourselves and acknowledge its existence to begin mitigating its detrimental effects using societal tools and culture eyes open. Same goes for greed, same goes for hate, our impulse to divide ourselves is destructive, our only hope is to acknowledge its there, it’s a near universal problem WE need to minimize.
We can’t though because we prefer to play pretend we are above our deeply ingrained animalistic programming, and would consider it insult to acknowledge those vestigial dark impulses are still part of us. But we need to, not to shame us, not to rationalize the cruelty that comes from them, but to add those variables into the equation of civilization so we can solve for homeostasis/relative happiness ans harmony. Denial/Repression is never the answer to anything. It makes things worse.
“Please understand that a subset of your group is a serious threat to our safety”
briefcase unclasping noise
“Sure but step one is to define what the term safe really means in this context…”
Round and round, whee!
i would like to request a case study from the psych department, where we make another post once this has all blown over that just says “rape bad, don’t rape women MMmkay?” or something like that so we can see how the responses differ.
i’m not shitposting i just think we should do this.
No because I personally am perfect and an exception.
You are, and no one else Mango.
Kinda hard to have an equal discussion when being a woman entails being sexually harassed and occasionally assaulted by a bunch of men, mostly ones you barely know or don’t know at all, on a regular basis before you even hit puberty. Your “sex war” is more like a sex genocide with the effects biting the whole male demographic in the ass, even the ones who didn’t cause it.
It’s also hard when most of the men that participate in this discussion (despite often not wanting to admit it at first) subconsciously think that women should listen to their venting 5 seconds after meeting them and be in a relationship with them and hug them and bang them and stuff. Seriously, interacting with guys just feels like gambling, with most of them forming some sort of unhealthy obsession with you and taking your kindness as a sign of weakness or inability to see their red flags; to a lot of guys, interaction with them is basically a green light to move on you. It sometimes feels like life is a “don’t unintentionally upset or engage with a random man too much or else he might find your phone number on the dark web and send you texts threatening to rape, torture, and murder you”. We live in a society where it’s relatively common for high school girls to have a guy classmate they occasionally talk to tell/text them that they wanna rape her, just unfiltered and out there because she decided to have a conversation.
Their problems are caused by patriarchy too, but that doesn’t mean I’m willing to subject myself to sexism from them. They, whether they realize it or not, feel like they deserve what they want from a woman, the unfairness of women not wanting them makes them frustrated and they see gender equality as a means to an end, they see it as a way to have women finally love them.
It’s not so much of “women and men are equally fucking up and need to make up” as it is “women are extremely scared by men, and negotiating with the likely emotionally unstable potentially violent people with nothing to lose who probably thought about you and them dating immediately after seeing you never seems like the good option”. It’s like encouraging kids to interact with people who they think are violent and might shoot up a school in order to convince them not to shoot up the school… Even talking to someone out of pity is endangering yourself.
Most guys want to get in your pants or eventually get to that point, whether you’re apathetic to them or nice to them or mean to them. How am I supposed to talk to guys about sexism when usually their main concern is the lack of action with women and my main concern is interacting with men is inherently extremely risky and I fear I’m about to get raped or murdered when a man raises his voice at me?
It has to be at least 95% of straight men who are the danger women have to do conversational twister with to be relatively safe and comfortable around, and the remaining portion of men usually take an “insult” about the majority of men as an “insult” to them.
Men and women are both negatively affected by our sexist system but the playing field is not level. The solution is getting a majority of men to realize exactly what women deal with from men, and getting them to actively work against their subconscious sexism to promote a safer environment for women and remove the high risk of interacting with men, including by halting the rampant objectification of women and their bodies, so women and men can actually be humans with each other for real. The widespread outrage things like the bear meme gets show that this probably isn’t going to work out any time soon. Men usually immediately think of it as a challenge to “prove” that women are worse by saying a lot of them are bitchy and hard to read and gold diggers or something, rather than a way to understand why women can’t feel safe around men the same way they can around women. But instead men think of it as how women feel about any single man, including them.
At least there are communities like !mensliberation@lemmy.ca that are on the right path though. Sigh.
Kinda hard to have an equal discussion when being a woman entails being sexually harassed and occasionally assaulted by a bunch of men, mostly ones you barely know or don’t know at all, on a regular basis before you even hit puberty.
genuine question, how do you expect it to get any better if you aren’t being civil? Like yeah theoretically if someone punches you or something, it’d feel good, and probably be legal to bash them over the head with a tire iron, but let’s be honest, the only thing that’s gonna do is end up with one of you dead. Which might work on the scale of war.
But when we’re talking about something on the scale of, literally half of society (or all of it), i don’t see how you expect that to work. I also don’t expect it to work, don’t get me wrong, i love having in depth conversations about problems, it’s fun. There’s an unspoken rule that goes a little something like “play hard, fight hard”
Their problems are caused by patriarchy too, but that doesn’t mean I’m willing to subject myself to sexism from them. They, whether they realize it or not, feel like they deserve what they want from a woman, the unfairness of women not wanting them makes them frustrated and they see gender equality as a means to an end, they see it as a way to have women finally love them.
it’s definitely interesting i’ve talked to a number of people, being an aro/ace myself it’s really weird talking to horny people. I can safely say, being told by a friend of yours that “they would like to rape you” is definitely one of the experiences of all time. My response to that is and will always be “i will kill you” because seriously what the fuck.
I get the feeling that people are probably over pathologizing it, because it’s hard to define, understand, and conceptualize why another person would ever fucking say that. I dont think it’s explicitly due to negligence, i think it’s a little more nuanced. Though i still think the defining factor here would be aggression, as that’s usually what follows intent.
It’s not so much of “women and men are equally fucking up and need to make up” as it is “women are extremely scared by men, and negotiating with the likely emotionally unstable potentially violent people with nothing to lose who probably thought about you and them dating immediately after seeing you never seems like the good option”. It’s like encouraging kids to interact with people who they think are violent and might shoot up a school in order to convince them not to shoot up the school… Even talking to someone out of pity is endangering yourself.
i think you might be misunderstanding the point here, i think the intent is specifically that women don’t know how to effectively communicate this problem, generally because violence scary. And the fact that men generally aren’t aware of it, because they aren’t self conscious to that degree, or they simply don’t have that level of real world experience surrounding them. It’s hard to ask questions you don’t know how to ask after all. I think some men don’t think/realize that it’s a problem, and since nobody seems to be informing them otherwise. Continue thinking that. I think there are an extreme minority that think otherwise, or at least i like to that think that way. Because otherwise i would expect a shit ton more crime be going on than there seems to be right now. I think for them, they’re probably more actively involved in these spaces, than other people are (on account of the hateful rhetoric) and as a result outweigh the better people, significantly. By a few factors i think.
There’s also the question of whether some of these are just literal bots now? Because that might be a thing.
Most guys want to get in your pants or eventually get to that point, whether you’re apathetic to them or nice to them or mean to them. How am I supposed to talk to guys about sexism when usually their main concern is the lack of action with women and my main concern is interacting with men is inherently extremely risky and I fear I’m about to get raped or murdered when a man raises his voice at me?
i think this part calls back to the previous part i mentioned about the original comment here, i don’t think anybody understands what’s happening, and i don’t think anybody understands what to do about it either. Also i feel like this over sexualizes men? Than again i’m also aro/ace so like, good luck making me horny (maybe i just don’t fucking understand it lol). In certain contexts i could see this being very true. On dating apps for example. At a bar for another one. Generally, just out in society. I don’t think that’s really the case. Because if most men are thinking about sex constantly that’s called porn addiction. That’s bad.
my point ultimately, is that as a male, or at least a male presenting individual, it’s impossible for me to be capable of understanding the quintessential experience of “being a woman” likewise, as a female, it’s also impossible to understand the quintessential experience of “being a man” and when you’re trying to speak across the divide, like a language barrier, it’s really difficult to effectively make a point, that either side can understand, that communicates problems between the two. Direct communication is probably the best solution, given that it requires the least amount of effort to think about. The problem here is how do we most effectively communicate the problem directly. There are almost certainly ways of doing it. The question is how, and finding the answer to it is the hard part.
Men usually immediately think of it as a challenge
fascinating generalization here btw. I have nothing else to say on it, so i’m just gonna let that one simmer i guess.
But instead men think of it as how women feel about any single man, including them.
this is one of the documented dangers of generalized statements. I think what happens here is that people make a generalization, and generalization usually include a social sub group. Think of “linux neckbeards” for example, and what happens when you make them, and specifically make statements about them that are negative. What i think happens, is that people see that, understand that you’re talking about the entire collective, and then realize that they’re a part of it, and that they’re a single individual. And if you think that badly of the group, you must therefore, think equally as bad as any given individual, and most people like to seem themselves as average, or above average, so what happens is that it impacts them. It’s the same reason people don’t like PR speak, it’s the same reason everyone hates HR, it’s the reason everyone hates legislation and politicians. They never just say it, and as a result it’s always hiding behind this layer of literary function. And people don’t like being spoken to like they aren’t people.
A good solution to this problem, obviously, is to stop making them. That’s a good start. Another solution, and the one that i like to employ because it’s a lot more versatile, is to speak about something in a very analytical manner. I speak about things directly, but i also speak about them in a very disconnected tone, so that it’s obvious that my thoughts are independent from my person. It also tends to instill a similar rhetoric in the other individual, because you sort of have to respond to it in kind, given it’s wording.
When you come off adversarial, people are going to respond in an adversarial manner. When you come off disconnected and flippant manner, people will also recognize that, and respond in kind. There will always be an individual who doesn’t respond in kind, and we refer to them as outliers, in a societal manner. There are either, unconscionably good people, or they are criminals, who do not respect the law.
speaking about the previously mentioned solution again, i’ve tried to do that with this response, i don’t have forever to work on this, so i’m not proof reading it lmao. But you may have noticed i’m not talking about you, or women more generically. I’m not talking about what you said literally, i’m talking about what was said in a more broad and societal manner. The reason why is that it doesn’t read lightly. And frankly, being angry on the internet all day, not very healthy, so i try to be pretty cognizant of it from time to time. Since i’ve isolated it, and i’m speaking about it more clinically. It’s much easier to disconnect me from your statements, and you from your statements as well. The hope here is that i can at least give you something to think about, whether it perhaps makes your day better, or gives you some food for thought, idk. That’s not my prerogative ultimately, that decision is up to the reader of this wall of text. At the end of the day i just want people to think more with their brains, and say less with anger. It’s good for you mentally, it keeps your brain healthy, and it promotes a more functional society.
in a way, you can look at this post as me trying to practice what i preach. We all strive to be good people, but don’t always try to be good people.
edit: im back, sorry i forgot to mention something i wanted to talk about right now.
There’s currently a big problem with red pill manosphere type shit right? You ever wonder why? It turns out the answer is pretty clear if you just look a little bit into it. Bear with me, i’m using free market economic theory here, it’s going to get a little funky. This is a missing market segmentation, and what we’re seeing is, people capitalizing on it. Not because it’s good content, but because there is so little existing, productive content that shovelling out this dogshit content in place, apparently suffices for a considerable amount of the market buyers. It’s increasingly reported across young men that they “have no purpose” and “don’t know what to do” and “don’t feel important” etc… The landscape is shifting. (i found the word limit lol, never mind, was going to add more, i can’t)
*Kinda hard to have an equal discussion when being a woman entails being sexually harassed and occasionally assaulted by a bunch of men, mostly ones you barely know or don’t know at all, on a regular basis before you even hit puberty.*genuine question, how do you expect it to get any better if you aren’t being civil?
The decision matrix here isn’t [civil engagement ||
or|| uncivil engagement], but rather:[civil engagement
andincur non-zero risk of uncivil retaliation ||or|| do not engage]Non-participation is the safer option, broadly speaking. If your speaking with a stranger, it’s better to let a minor slight slide, than to engage civilly. As you get to know someone better, as you become more familiar with conditions, this chart becomes a secondary consideration or even unnecessary. But with strangers, you never know if you’re dealing with an outlier.
Person wrote a whole, nuanced, and detailed response outlining the various communications issues and such (including already addressing your robotic interpretation), and that’s all you contribute?
Considering it’s a whole lot of aggrieved bullshit revolving around civility-haranguing, you’re lucky the harangued respondent even gave that much. Posts like this are deadass why when debate pervs start debate perving to that magnitude, I respond with “I’m real happy you feel that way but I’m not reading all that shit”
Cause I want the 10 minutes it took me to get through all that ego-brain bullshit returned to my possession
Thank you for going out of your way to say this 💯
i’ve been saying this the entire time, and weirdly, people seem to like it, or at the very least, stop commenting to my responses because they simply don’t want to engage because productive dialogue bad? Or something, idk it’s the internet don’t ask me, i’m not real.
Teach your son those things too.
I think it’s just one of those like, hostile to anything not seen as “default” kinda things, right? there are two sexes, male, and political, two races, white, and political, two orientations, straight and political, kinda deal.
i don’t know how much i follow this tbh.
I think that’s probably the case for some people in some communities. More broadly? i doubt it though, i think.
Like i’ve followed linux communities semi regularly, and every so often you’ll get mentions of queer posting in the comments, and you’ll get queerphobic shit in response, which given that the linux community is mostly older people, who are nerds, that generally tracks with what you expect, but there are also always people who just aren’t pieces of shit also, so idk how much of it is demographic concat, or something else entirely.
“I’ve never experienced it so you must just be imagining it” pretty much describes the conflict of every issue out there, from race to mental illness. Hell, even things like homelessness.
The fact that there could be someone out there thinking, “I have 17 homes, so clearly they are imagining not having a home”, does not shock me
edit: grammar and my brains is a mix of spaghetti and mashed potatoes
It’s more like, “I own 17 homes and it wasn’t that hard to get that many. They must not be trying hard enough.”
being perennially excluded from parents group, kids activities, volunteering, coaching and other social connective activities because you’re a male parent and might accidentally sexually assault someone
losing multiple male friends to suicide, and seeing society handwave it away as being less important than any other form of death, despite its incidence being 10 times that of homicide
being objectified as inherently dangerous, simply for having a penis, and worse still understanding why
starting each day trying to be good, and do good, and that still never, ever being enough
Why participate?
That stuff sucks, and to add to your first point, I love hanging out with kids. They view the world in an interesting way that usually leads to funny out of context quotes about their parents.
But would I go up to even an acquaintances kid to talk? No. Since I’m a 199cm (🇲🇲6’6🇱🇷) hunk of man meat, I’d probably scare the kid and parent half to death.
The same goes for anyone, not just women. I don’t have the right to make anyone feel unsafe and if I am, then it’s my duty to walk away.
It’s not my fault, or yours. It’s just the way of things, and the only way we can fix it, is to respect everyone’s feelings. Unless they’re minimising your loss of someone, in which case fuck them.
why should anyone be thought of as scary by other simply because of how they were born, people shouldnt look at someone and assume they are gonna start killing people just because they are big or a man, that is wrong it is wrong to think that way and the people who do should change.
I mean the idea that if people perceive u as dangerous for no good reason they should act as if u were dangerous and thats just something u have to deal with is ridiculous, in any other context this line of reasoning would be considered obviously wrong if a white person acted as tho all black people were dangerous they would be rightly called racists and be expected to change their behavior so why should it be any different with men, why is it suddenly ok good even to uphold the patriarchy against men, this is ridiculous if people feel afraid of u for no reason u should challenge them on it and question it not just accept it as if it were normal.
This is funny when it comes to minority groups in a larger one.
I remember telling someone passionate about his org that I’ve seen some homophobia/queerphobia and shit in the org, and he was like “Homophobia here??? We don’t tolerate that, it can’t be happening. I haven’t seen it”
Well, it’s not like they are calling you a f****t or some shit, you aint queer
It’s super ironic that you are the top comment in THIS thread.
Hi again, you assumed that I thought deep fakes worked off magicly making nudes and just didn’t understand the technology of aggregation as opposed to listening to the ways that women are being blackmailed and harassed by it. And that even if deepfake is exponentially faster and more accessible, it’s nothing new or different than drawing a picture of someone naked, even in the age of social media
Instead of actually listening you were arrogant, dismissive and hostile. You are the man in this comic. You are the person who is not harmed by deep fakes, so it’s not a real problem.
It’s been a while so idk if you remember, but as soon as I realized what you meant I immediately owned up to my mistake. This was from one of the last comments I made to you back then:
I’m not trying to be disingenuous, it genuinely sounded like you didn’t realize, that’s my bad.
I thought you meant something that you didn’t. The second I realized, I admitted that I was at fault. I fucked up there, and I’m sorry for that.
And the very next thing you said was…
So yes, you apologized for assuming I didn’t understand what I was talking about, but you then double down ignoring the harassment I was bringing up. I’m not interested in discussing any part of this with you, we already have gone round and round. I was just shocked, amazed to read you today and had to highlight your lack of self awareness in saying
“I’ve never experienced it so you must just be imagining it”
Harassment of women with deepfakes has no impact or relevance, because hostility to women only has no impact or relevance to you.
I’m… a little confused. That comment of mine has nothing to do with my comment above or the post.
The post is about people’s ignorance, and their refusal to accept that there may be anything outside of their limited perspective.
I never said that your point wasn’t valid, or was made up. I simply didn’t agree with it, and had my own opinion. My last comment to you back then literally talked about the fact that I feel terrible for those negatively impacted by this, acknowledging that it’s a real thing that affects real people.
Someone acknowledging yet disagreeing with you isn’t the same at what’s in this post, and imo does it a massive disservice, as its about a lot more than that.
Here’s my comment for clarity:
Right now we live in a pretty puritan society, so the transitional phase is going to suck and people are going to be hurt. Obviously that’s awful, and none of this should take away from that fact, I feel horrible for the people negatively impacted by this.
And while that’s all true, it’s also true that as we continue going down this road we’ll reach a point where it simply won’t matter anymore.
The first part clearly addresses and acknowledges reality. I’m in no way dismissing it, pretending it doesn’t exist, or saying that “because I don’t experience it it isn’t real”. I fully acknowledge that it’s real and is a serious issue.
The second part is my own opinion in addition to it. It doesn’t take away from the first part, this isn’t a zero sum game, both can be true. I have my own opinion while fully acknowledging your own and seeing the validity of it.
exactly. empathy is the ability to realize other people have different experiences than you. to think about what it’s actaully like to be homeless.
but people think it means ‘just agree with me and make me feel good, and if i feel bad for people i am a good person’
Most people I know lack empathy for things like this. Even people I’ve grown up with my whole life.
So that raises the question, is it something you’re inherently born with? As I don’t think I chose to be this way, but here we are. I find it interesting to think about.
Empathy is definitely a learned trait that develops slowly. Children generally start off treating life as if it has a preset plot and other people as sort of NPCs or characters in their life. Realising other people and even animals experience things at all should happen at some point. And realising their experiences are different again later. But it’s a complicated process and may even fail.
https://www.psychologytoday.com/us/blog/smart-parenting-smarter-kids/201905/how-children-develop-empathy looked pretty good from a quick search. Otherwise that’s just my memory from basic psychology classes.
Thanks for the response. I guess some people still think everybody else is an NPC into later life lol.
I’ll have a read of that link over the weekend so thanks for sharing.
getting beyond ape-brain requires a lot of learning and practice. like any skill.
depends on your genetics and the environment of the womb, brains are pretty complicated and behaviour is affected a lot by that kind of stuff. there exist people who mostly or entirely lack empathy after being born and there are people who are ultraempathetic, and there’s a ton in between.
there’s also a difference between “cognitive empathy” (the ability to recognize others’ emotions) and “affective empathy” (how you emotionally respond to your perception of others’ emotions). something also associated with empathy is the ability to distinguish between yourself and others, i.e. how well you can put yourself in their shoes rather than think of their experience from your own perspective.
a lot of people suck at the last one, which is bad because even if you have positive affective empathy and can share others’ emotions, you still may not be able to really grasp how they feel and you’ll probably think that they’re overreacting or underreacting or reacting wrong because you can’t imagine yourself acting the same way if you experienced the same thing. many people are subconsciously sexist or racist because they see someone dealing with casual sexism and racism and think it’s not that bad, just brush it off, but they can’t relate at all because they don’t have the same set of life experiences and same psychology as other people. to them it’s “i wouldn’t react that way if someone did that to me, so you shouldn’t either”.
it’s usual for humans to have enough empathy to survive as a pack/society at least, but it’s also usual for humans to not have a mood disorder and it’s usual for humans to have 5 toes on each foot. in some “societies” like american capitalism, less affective empathy is usually advantageous with high cognitive empathy, and more affective empathy is usually a disadvantage, which is kind of the opposite trend in humans.
a lot of the times when it seems someone lacks empathy, they either don’t express their empathy in typical ways, or conditions (like culture) require them to silence it to be successful. but they could also just lack affective empathy, or have dissonant empathy (affective empathy entailing an opposite emotional response than what you would expect), both of which are typical anti-social and narcissistic traits.
Thank you for all this, it’s been very informative.
It does raise a few more questions, but it’s cool if you don’t have time to answer.
What kind of empathy would it be when one cries at films due to the story. Whether it be something bad happening to somebody or even tears of joy for their success.
How does one know if there empathy for someone else is from your own perspective vs trying to see it from someone else’s?
Like if I’ve never been homeless but i wholeheartedly can understand and see how one might end up there though choices, or even no fault of their own.
There’s also the “I have suffered it and therefore everyone else must suffer it as well”
the two faces of an extremely punchable coin
Don’t forget “I’ve suffered it and it wasn’t that bad so don’t pretend it is”
Which actually means “I’ve pretended to suffer it and you are probably too”.
“I experienced racism. I was called a potato once and seriously, it wasn’t as bad as all the n* pretend it is. Get over it.”
Sometimes it means “I did a thing in the past and don’t recognise the ways in which it has changed over time to become worse today than it was in my day”.
Reporter: [REDACTED]
Reason: it’s pizzacakeSome people don’t know how to click downvote and move on with their day,
or make a comment,
or make their own c/ComicsExceptPizzaCake community.Some people have to talk to the manager and waste my time.
Some people don’t know how to click downvote and move on with their day,
The classic “Someone is WRONG on the internet!” phenomenon.
Am I out of the loop?
Why don’t people like Pizzacake?
The artist makes boring unfunny comics, then when people question why her comics are popular she makes misandrist drama comics about how all these evil men are out to get her, which makes the hate even worse.
Damm, I didn’t know there were people with such a hateboner for pizzacake. Her stuff is not top shelf comedy but they tend to give me a chuckle consistently.
Completely agree. The normal silly comics are usually somewhat amusing. Can’t say I like her more misandry ones, but they tend to be responses to actual assholes, so I just ignore them and move on when I see them.
her more misandry ones
“A guy was shitty to me.”
“This is an attack on all guys!”
Haha yeah the internet is cool huh
To be fair, I’ve also seen a significant number of cases where a guy venting that a woman was shitty to him has been deemed misogyny unless he makes an explicit effort to make it clear he’s only talking about those specific women and it does not generalize to any woman not specifically mentioned.
Actually it’s about ethics in comics journalism
Thanks for summarising.
I wish your anus well.
> Posts generic comic
> Comments are abusive
> Makes comic about abusive comments
> Abusers claim comic is abusive toward themUh huh.
Hell if I know: I’d never even heard of it.
I have zero thoughts or comments on this specific comment, but can we please leave pizzacake on reddit? They were already plenty inescapable enough there.
Do y’all have any justification besides hating something popular?
are other justifications needed? seeing the same shit in the same in the same style all the time gets boring regardless of any other factor.
When the response is ‘mods should ban this artist’s work,’ absofuckinglutely more justification is needed. Kneejerk hatred for something popular is childish. Whining about it to others is performative sneering. Expecting authority to enforce a shallow contrarian opinion is just plain shitty.
Underlined in bold when half the complaints go ‘We’re not like that! Fuck this bitch!’
I never asked for mods to ban pizzacake, I asked the potential audience to practice a little bit of discernment in their tastes.
I think this is an important distinction, personally.
true but wanting people to stop posting something and asking the mods to ban it are different things, if that is what u got from the original comment that is an extremely… extreme reading of it. If that is the context u had in mind for ur comment i dont disagree but imma be honest i think i misread it.
The politest comment in a wave of kneejerk backlash is still part of that wave.
i havent seen any comment here calling for it to be banned.
They’re boring and lame, and they have a cultish following of people who defend them not because they are actually good, but because the artist receives abuse.
This comic is a prime example of it. Completely unfunny, unoriginal, strawman argument that achieves nothing more than making people argue with each other.
The only arguing here is your cult of haters. Making the comic not a strawman. It’s about you.
The answer to the question was evidently “no.”
If it was pebbleyeet you’d have a point
My issue with pizzacake is her wildly sycophantic fans and their disingenuous bad behavior.
So as much as I may not be a fan of pizzacake, yeah I agree she obviously isn’t as awful or problematic as a literal Nazi and thus doesn’t deserve to be maligned the same way as pebbleshit does.
I don’t want to see this place turn into another worship space for pizzacake, but I also don’t believe that she personally deserves any ire or overt negativity as a person
At least it isn’t another heathcliff
I will take Heathcliff over pizza cake 10 out of 7 days of the weeks
Ah yes.
The group of men, which granted IS larger than it should be, that say stupid shit like this online or in person is not representative of men in GENERAL.
If I sat there and tried to bring out the worst characteristics my exes had for ALL women, I would be as much of an asshole as this comic creator is.
There will, unfortunately, ALWAYS be bad actors in the human race. Those that get their kicks from saying stupid shit like the man in this comic, because they have nothing better in life to do and probably hate their life so much that they do and say the stupid shit they do because they are broken people in one way or another.
Does that mean that all men are the same? No, of course not, and it’s kind of silly to even think that way to begin with.
Are all women as horrible, cheating and uncaring as my exes? No, of course not! I have a beautiful and caring woman in my life now who treats me well!
I think we sometimes let the minority outclass the majority, especially when trying to spin a narrative that basically ends up being: All men = bad All women = bad All white people = bad All black people = bad
The reality is, folks, that you need to keep the bigger picture in your mind at all times.
Did that group of people on an online forum act in bad faith? Yes? Then move on, and let their toxicity eat away at them until they no longer exist in this world. By giving them your time, and letting them upset you, you are doing exactly what they are wanting, which is to cause chaos and dissent for no real reason other than getting a rise out of someone or to fool someone else into thinking the same way.
What’s it like to be this oblivious?
Then move on, and let their toxicity eat away at them until they no longer exist in this world.
Do you want MAGA? This is how you get MAGA.
Tell us where the bear touched you.
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Whew, you made a great rebuttal to something that someone somewhere said probably, but not this comic.
Where the fuck does this comic make the assertion “all men”? What makes this comic creator an asshole (from this comic, I’m not aware of any of their other work)?
It’s the damn bear. If the damn bear hadn’t been posted a few days ago, everyone would have been like yeah that sounds about right
I think their point was that unless 100% of men are contributing to a problem, the problem clearly doesn’t exist, no matter how many women experience it.
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Yeah, no, the comic isn’t about all men. It’s about the subset of men that take offense at any criticism of men and cry “not all men!” at it.
It’s hilarious talking about your point being proven by a double standard not being seen, when you are proving the point of the comic in the process.
I was under the impression that you were going to stay out of gender discussions altogether. Am I mistaken? Normally people with modlog rap sheets this long have gotten site bans. We’ve really gone out of our way, and I’m starting to feel we’re being taken advantage of. You already got your ’grad account banned and you got this one banned from hexbear. If you can’t stop it I will.
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I think you’re pissed off at bourgeois feminist theory and bourgeois race theory, which are deserving of criticism, especially since they’re used as class weapons against non-whites both within the imperial core and the periphery. But you don’t get to use these bourgeois theories as an excuse to dismiss the proletarian ones, or as an excuse for bigotry. For example, just because a liberal Critical Race Theory was created and promoted to subsume/recuperate the original socialist theory doesn’t mean we can ignore the original.
Unfortunately ProleWiki doesn’t have much in this area as yet.
- https://en.prolewiki.org/wiki/Proletarian_feminism
- https://en.prolewiki.org/wiki/Critical_race_theory
- https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Combahee_River_Collective
- The Combahee River Collective, 1977:A Black Feminist Statement
Much more often than not, “not all men” is used as a cudgel, similarly to how “not all whites” is, and the same goes for “men are oppressed” / “whites are oppressed.” How bad they are in comparison I don’t care to argue; it’s enough to say that they’re also bad. They are not false statements in themselves (as proletarian theories show), but they’re usually either misapplied or applied in bad faith.
Outside of gender topics, I personally have very much appreciated your contributions to the site in my comparatively short time here so far. Thank you. We have desperately few Global South voices here, never mind leftist ones, so that is a treasure, and I want this to be a welcoming space for such voices, so we can be exposed to more & more of them.
But this must also be a welcoming space for women. Because we’re intentionally not belligerent toward intellectually honest, good-faith liberals, creeping bourgeoisified feminism & CRT will sometimes surface contradictions between these two goals, which in my mind shouldn’t otherwise contradict. I don’t mean to imply that I’m an expert in this area, but I don’t think you’re equipped to resolve those contradictions, and I’m not sure you’re trying to. Whether or not they come from manosphere/MGTOW brainworms, your takes sound like they are, and we can’t have that.
We as men are not the baddies. And I am not even going to phrase it as a question, because it is a fact. Neither is it our fault, nor is it our doing.
Then where is your ministry towards those who are perpetrators, who have created the conditions you complain about?
I have never seen a piece of content removed for misandry at all. NEVER. It is always about misogyny. Why is that?
Considering misandry tends to not leave men in SA’d and left in a chalk outline where misogyny very frequently does, I imagine that’s the answer to your question. It’s genuinely mindboggling to me that every time discussions or een metadiscussions of misogyny see you pull up on your #NotAllMen shit; right down to getting your lemmygrad account banned over it.
If we’re to accept your #NotAllMen spiel, then where was the #NotEveryMan like you to stop the man that happened to me? Where was the #NotEveryMan like you to stop what happened to my mother? My aunt? My grandmother? My little cousins? The point is this shit will not stop until our ministry isn’t aimed at women, but other men.
You’ll get nowhere complaining at the people our socialization wounds.
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So am I; and I’ve even heard some of the same shit. Difference is, I have enough discernment to know that any “feminist” telling a male CSA survivor that they should never have spoken out, or that it "wasn’t rape because you liked it’ (that’s the variant I’ve personally heard, multiple times) is probably a radfem who shouldn’t be looked to as an example of the broader movement. Further, I refuse to let it poison my views of the movement as a whole because there is still a mass disparity between what WE have to go through and what THEY have to go through, and what THEY go through is infinitely worse. Discernment and empathy go a lot farther than “but what about MY feelings”.
oh sorry I am so misogynistic, I will shut up
Honestly, at this point, I do think you’re a misogynist on some level, because this isn’t the first time this discussion’s been had with you, and I’m not the first one to do it. Frankly, considering you’ve done nothing but intensify your debate perversion about this since getting banned from Lemmygrad over it, it’s fucking ironic that you talk about ‘critiquing oneself’. Pot, kettle, hello!
I could go on and on, but I am pretty sure all this is just “misogyny” and I need to read certain theory and I need to surround myself with feminists who are thirsty to oppress men at all costs.
Feminists are not “hungry to oppress men at all costs”. You have no idea what feminism is, and its clear you’re getting all your information about it from right-wing chuds. I recommend reading more books and actually engaging with feminist theory, rather than watching anti-feminist / manosphere troll channels. There are plenty of resources we can recommend, that you should read before going on these rants.
Tread carefully, because we will not hesitate to issue temp ban for misogyny. Follow Mao’s advice here: No investigation, no right to speak.
My dude 100% confidentially came in here and went not all men.
I legitimately don’t understand how a man can be blind to this kind of treatment of women. Don’t you just need to look at any treatment of women online for more than a nanosecond and you’ll see this?
Selfishness, ignorance, lack of empathy, inability to see more than one perspective, misogyny, the “Well, I’m alright, Jack.” mentality, and the ability to ignore all the evidence in order to maintain my own personal view are just some of the tactics I’m employing right now to openly disbelieve what you tell me is your own personal lived experience. Glad I could
mansplainexplain that for you. s/I suppose some men are just so used to their own toxicity that they just look down on anyone who “can’t take it”. Women suffer even more because they are more easily targeted and “will never be as tough”
my theory is that it’s just sort of universal across the internet. You have a wrong think in a group, and that group will delete you forever.
I think there’s a more specific version of this that ends up targeting women directly though.
We see it all the time with internet justice, someone posts rage bait, fake or real, people doxx them, people harm them, whatever. Shit like this just kind of happens. I think.
My hypothesis is it’s two major parts:
- Protect one’s ego at all costs. Anything that makes you feel bad, at all, is to be rejected.
- Join in-groups that do not value or respect women.
For most people, belief is more social than we’d like to admit. So if your in-groups are a bunch of jerks who think women “talk too much” or whatever, you’ll probably adopt that. It’ll be continually reinforced from your socializing. Then with point #1, any time contrary evidence that does manage to break through you’ll reject it rather than doing any hard work or introspection.
Can you explain point 1 more? How do negative experiences online for women damage men’s egos?
I am by no means an expert on this.
But just spitballing, let’s imagine the victim (often but not always a woman) says something generalized like “Men are assholes online.” The man hears this, and since they are a man, and since men were just called assholes, they feel like they were called an asshole. That hurts the sense of self, the ego, to accept.
I think it’s the group identity thing, really? Like, the group they’re a part of was insulted, so they feel personally insulted. Accepting that the group isn’t great is hard for the brain. They don’t want to be part of a group that’s bad (men online) because that hurts their sense of self, the ego.
I’m a guy, but I don’t, like, care. Not in a gender-queer or trans way, but it’s just not a big deal to me. Maybe that’s why if someone’s like “Men are trash” I can just shrug. But if someone was like “People in New York City are pretentious, rude, assholes” I’d probably have an emotional response. But patriarchy is a much bigger and more wide spread issue, so it’s not really the same.
That makes sense. Perhaps sweeping generalisations should be avoided out of concern such a response could be triggered. FWIW, there are loads of sweeping generalisations about women too. Even the ones that look innocuous bother me.
Maybe! I meant to write in my previous one but forgot: often when the person is making the sweeping generalization in this kind of context, they’re upset. They’re annoyed. They’re not going to be their most kind, patient, self. You probably wouldn’t be if some strangers just told you they were going to [threats and insults].
So while it’s in a sense true that we should avoid broad generalizations, I think it’s fair to cut someone slack in this kind of context. They are probably not looking to be nitpicked.
Think about times you’re annoyed. Like, let’s say FedEx just delivered you a smashed package for the third time in a row. You go “FedEx sucks they always ruin my packages”. You probably don’t need or want someone to go “actually, them deliver more than 99% of packages with no problems. Maybe you should [unsolicited advice]”. It doesn’t matter if that’s true. That’s not what you’re looking for in that moment.
All of that aside, yeah, we should be mindful of speaking in absolutes.
Well that definitely escalated.
I think this is a great place to ask this: What would be the problem, if we would ignore gender in all laws?
This should be a thought experiment, I don’t intend to attack anybody
Which laws? Most institutions in pretty much every society are still largely controlled by men. If you remove laws that are meant to create more equity or to protect women from discrimination, this trend will grow stronger, as people tend to hire and prefer the company of others like themselves. Men will vote for other men and male dominated fields will continue to hire men due to explicit or subconscious bias. There are always exceptions to this, but you can see that sort of self-selection occurring even in things that are low stakes, like hobby groups.
The “colorblind” approach doesn’t really work. it only serves to maintain social hierarchies by ignoring that there’s a problem in the first place.
By basically not having the laws which are there to promote solving the problem, it effectively ignores that there’s a problem at all. Being officially legally the same doesn’t mean society treats you the same, and at that point you’re trusting the population to just dissolve the hierarchies themselves with the law disallowing the methods which are actually effective at doing that which… doesn’t work.
Plus there’s a ton of ways to discriminate in law without mentioning gender, and having plausible deniability about it. That’s what a ton of the Jim Crow era in the US was about. That’s what much existing legislation does with women actually.
☺️ thank you for that great response
If you read this comic and the first thing you think about is how men feel, you’re part of the problem.
so true men dont have feelings there is no reason to care about what they think or how they feel or how things affect them. Empathy is wasted on men, not that u had any of that anyways.
Are you OK, son? Nobody said all that.
not verbatim.
Not at all, take a deep breath and start assuming best intent or you’ll stress yourself out.
maybe take ur own advice once in a while, also there’s a difference between seeing thru other peoples shit and assuming the worst.
Grow up
again u should take ur own advice, empathy often comes with age maybe ull have some in some years.
What about if I read it and thought, well online communities are hostile towards everybody?
They aren’t hostile in the same degree towards all groups. Sure, you may have people mock you on a voice chat after you get killed in a game, but the chances are nothing alike those of the harassment you will get for having a female voice.
I am baffled by how humanity has managed to survive this long when so many men suck so fucking much. Then, when I think of it further, large portions of it was probably due to the women having no fucking choice, exemplifying one of many important ways in which men suck.
To her, probably.
That’s how it happened in her mind, perhaps.
I mean sure, I know men can be a little rough and abraisive at times, but this literally psychopath behavior (especially the last panel).
No man in their right mind would lay it on this thick without some serious provocation.
Well there’s definitely no literal psychopaths on the internet, at least we’re safe here…
/s
As far as Internet discussions go, I’ve learned that you literally just have to grow a bit of a thicker skin and not take everything too seriously. Especially the abusive stuff.
The people responding to you do not know you personally, in fact they pretty much know nothing about you except what you posted. Something that’s harmless and inoffensive to one person or relatable to another can be off-putting and offensive to the next. The only way to achieve at least a little bit of clarity is to engage in an open discussion about it if it seems worth the time and effort.
Otherwise, my rule of thumb is that if someone just starts blasting insults at me they’ve already lost the argument and I’m just going to ignore them because that’s their own issue to figure out. It might be frustrating sometimes, especially if you think you’ve made a valid point and all you get is hate in return, but at least you’ll retain your sanity. And perhaps it’s a chance to rethink how to better communicate your point, but I don’t think going out there and wholesale accusing an entire gender is going to do anything to calm the waves.
Yeah, I’m gonna disagree with you here. Lots of people are really comfortable being excessive shits online, especially when they have some sort of grievance. PizzaCake is like a fucking lodestone for disdain, so this has definitely happened. Worse has definitely happened.
Assuming, of course, that we’re both on the same page that this comic is an illustration of an online conversation and not, like, meant to be taken literally.
If this is supposed to be an illustration of an online conversation, I could certainly see that happening, but I due to the quite extensive use of body language I certainly did not assume that.
Either way, I’ve seen a few comics of hers and they were frankly all man-hating garbage. I’m sorry to say this but she is literally this meme:
The irony here is so thick, it’s absolutely incredible.
Unlike the guy in the OP, I have been quite civil and respectful, and I certainly haven’t called anyone slur words, much less without any provocation.
Avoiding slurs is good, but you’re still claiming that her experience is impossible because you’ve never experienced the same thing.
I didn’t say it’s impossible, I said that it’s rare enough to be considered a mental illness. Perhaps not so much on the Internet, but the fact that there are clearly two people physically having a discussion made me assume that this particular conversation happened IRL, not online.
And yes, I certainly have experienced similar — basically in any gender-based discussion on Lemmy there’ll be people trying to curse and attack you unless you always 100% take the female side of the issue, which I won’t do because men have a right to be men. It’s certainly true that there are a ton of things they can do to improve, but consider that every day, new people show up to the same old topics and they have to go through their own learning process as well.
In short, the basic rule of online discussion should be to never ever take anything personally because unless you know the other person IRL, it most certainly isn’t.
In their right mind
Some weirdos take correction or rejection as a personal attack, and subscribe to the ethos that the best defense is a good offense.
Some women also have a way of doing things that are particularly off-putting to men, so it’s equally possible that the author THOUGHT she was saying something relatively innocuous while actually coming off aggressive or accusatory.
Either way, it’s a stupid comic because it does nothing to solve the issue — it just stereotypes men as being aggressive and brutish. This is certainly not going to help improve the situation in any way.
Yeah the comic is pretty dumb, it’s definitely an over simplification. Just recognize that dudes being aggressive is a thing, even if it’s not all dudes, because it certainly isn’t.
People online can be rather hostile sometimes, yes. But not only isn’t it always men doing it, men are also quite frequently on the receiving end of it.
so true only men can be aggressive that is a uniquely male thing so its worth pointing it out over the reality that all people are aggressive at times
Aggressive men exist ≠ only men can be aggressive. This is why we teach a small amount of formal logic in school.
Obviously not to him
To be fair, men would get near the same response. “Stupid bitch slut Ken”. The hate is the same, only the names change.
Men would get that response from whom?
The internet. It’s a hateful place if you haven’t noticed.
And who on the internet exactly?
The computers aren’t going to do so on their own (yet)
The whole point of the place is anonymity. This enables people to do things they otherwise wouldn’t, particularly when it comes to the treatment of others. How have you not noticed this?.. Like have you taken 15-20 minutes and actually given this any thought or are you just going off of emotion?
me :) i do that :) me:) (but only consensually)
Oh my, I guess you just love the approval of someone consenting :) you dirty :)) consent-horny :-) slut :)
does it matter? in an unrelated but topical example is the patriarchy acceptable when it is upheld by women against other women?
also from everyone the answer is from everyone.
Strawmen. Very dangerous creatures.
Your preconceived notions are part of the problem.
We should have left this world behind a long time ago.
I’m tired.
Probably all you need to really do is leave social media, including Lemmy, behind.
Not the worst advice, tbh.
Also, I’m planning on eating some tacos soon, so you’re 2 for 2.
Well the latter part is just common sense lol
ooh tacos, good idea
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