Update regarding Hexbear's misogyny problem - planned actions and request for feedback
Update regarding Hexbear's misogyny problem - planned actions and request for feedback
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:
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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.
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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.
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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
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Encouraging [namely femme] participation in /c/womenby and taking steps to revitalize that sub as an excellent source of discussion on feminism and intersectionality
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Holding another mod drive to get more folks into mod positions in our communities who can help weed out reactionary attitudes
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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 
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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.
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.
The idea behind it is that masc and masc-aligned people would be doing the bulk of work educating other mascs, sorry if that wasn't clear. You're absolutely right that it's the responsibility of mascs to educate themselves first and then educate others without pushing that work onto femmes. We also see all the comments regarding how the comms are named and how its problematic, so we're discussing that as well.
no no i think u misunderstand me, apologies. i was referring to comments from people on this thread, which have since been removed, asking to be educated in what is wrong with the whole thing around the cheating thread. i support the idea of the education comm - my problem was with the mostly men reopening the issue here, where it really wasn't appropriate, and where the educating labour would mostly have come from the not men. but it seems like the mods are on top of those kinds of comments now.
even so thanks for responding and trying to deal with the situation. i know how much of a mess it can be.
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.
The idea behind it is that masc and masc-aligned people would be doing the bulk of work educating other mascs, sorry if that wasn't clear. You're absolutely right that it's the responsibility of mascs to educate themselves first and then educate others without pushing that work onto femmes. We also see all the comments regarding how the comms are named and how its problematic, so we're discussing that as well.