- cross-posted to:
- chapotraphouse
- cross-posted to:
- chapotraphouse
The owner has locked it to only allow them to post. That's fine, but all posts they've made so far they've also locked at zero comments to disallow the community to interact with those posts.
This goes against the purpose of lemmy(grad) in my opinion which is interaction and discussion. If the person behind this wants to post static things without feedback they'd be better served by hosting a website and hoping people stumble on it.
It's one thing for admins to lock posts at their discretion because of an nonconstructive turn to discussion or because it's an announcement and they don't want fighting over their rules that they've decided on. Likewise for mods to not allow comments on a rules post or shut down discussion when it becomes unproductive.
The content is also somewhat sketchy feeling. I admit it's true that there can be issues with female on male relationship violence not being taken seriously but such statistics are often pushed to silence and tamp down on the overwhelming societal issue which is in fact male on female violence within and outside of relationships. To shout down feminists with "men can be raped too" is like shouting down black lives matter with "all lies matter" or "white people experience police violence too".
Honestly it rings alarm bells. There's nothing wrong about talking about gendered violence towards men and boys, but this site seems to frame it in terms of persecution, in terms of there being some sort of feminist agenda to silence and shut down discussion on these matters.
Take for example this link from the blog this community models itself on: https://thetinmen.blog/we-are-not-violent/
In it they feature researchers who claim they received bomb threats, had their dogs shot, were shouted down by feminists. All of this rings alarm bells in my head that these people are likely reactionaries using progressive language as a cover. It uses the classic reactionary tact of claiming repression. They claim to have studies showing female on male violence in families being equal to male on female violence. Which is on its face a dishonest framing. Sure women may shout (verbal abuse) and with dishonest twisting of terminology you can over-count aggressive but not actually violent or dangerous behavior and use it to try and equal out men who give women black eyes. But you can't hide the homicide rates and those show us that women and girls are far more frequently murdered by men and boys than the inverse.
Once more, it's not that gendered violence towards men and boys doesn't exist, it's that gendered violence towards women and girls is much more severe, prevalent, has within our lifetime been the subject of tv-tropes and jokes (slapping a "hysterical woman" to calm her down as just one example) and has more severe consequences such as girls and women being attacked, seriously injured, and even killed.
Rape against men and boys is unacceptable, coercion for sex is unacceptable. But the fact is men and boys are the overwhelming committers in volume of sexual violence on women and girls that is actually physically violent, forceful, etc. Men for the most part merely feel a social pressure on their status to agree to sex with women, that they'll be less of a man if they don't agree. Every request from men and boys towards women and girls carries an implicit fall-back of violence, even lethal levels of it for rejecting a male, for denying them sex, intimacy, a relationship, etc and women and girls live with that every day, every encounter in the back of their minds. While such violence towards men and boys does not define their lived experiences, they do not naturally due to a felt prevalence assume that denying a girl intimacy, a relationship, or sex will likely result in her escalating to violence and the potential of bodily harm and danger.
Not taking that reality, that material and historical reality into account when discussing gendered violence makes one dishonest.
The site is evasive in what it talks about, it frames itself as for progressive rights of men and boys and what woman can oppose that? Not I. I'm all for men having conversations about healthy masculinity, reform, male solidarity that isn't to the exclusion of women but looks like support for men by men. But it feels off and the fact the owner has locked any ability to discuss it also adds to the ringing alarm bells. Truthfully if they hadn't done that I wouldn't have spent 10 minutes looking over a few things there and realizing it felt sketchy.
It seems like a lot of this sketchy stuff is papered over and hidden between bland, no analysis, uninteresting, unenlightening, surface level feminist-friendly stuff like roe-v-wade being overturned being bad but then just throwing some statistics out and not really getting into any analysis or insight.
Here's an example of more problematic stuff: https://thetinmen.blog/just-be-you/
"I want to define myself by who I am. Not as a feminist, an MRA or egalitarian, as left, or right, liberal or conservative."
It's alarming that MRA is mentioned as a possibility as if egalitarian which is used by the manosphere to disguise their hatred of women.
And one last one: https://thetinmen.blog/soft-power-and-the-henpecked-husband/
Which seems to downplay the power and reality of patriarchy.
I don't want to get too into the weeds of the content and it's merits. Because even if the content were incredibly uncontroversial and in no world could be considered sketchy or one-sided, even if it were something we all agreed upon as Marxist-Leninists just by our nature, the lack of ability for discussion is in my opinion against the intended nature and function of lemmy.
If you're going to post something here you have to deal with people replying, even disagreeing with you. You don't have to respond, you don't have to even look at their responses if you don't want to, you can chuck something out there into the feed and then ignore all discussion. But others should be able to.
I ask admins to consider whether this content should be here and whether this community should exist given two separate issues:
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The locking of the whole community against interaction and just using it as a posting board for someone's stuff which seems counter to lemmy's intentions and function.
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The questionable content present
edit 13 hours in: Since looking more into it since I wrote this post I have changed my mind. I was too conciliatory in my language. So let me be clear. I think this rises to a case of global rules violation, hatred, misogyny and the OP and sole moderator should be appropriately sanctioned. No benefit of the doubt is deserved given the language they used on the sidebar about the stuff they were posting being useful
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Not a lemmygradder, but I agree. Literally all of the "very useful infographics" are manosphere talking points, and the source blog is clearly just MRA propaganda wrapped up in a coat of false progressive paint. The deliberate refusal to allow discussion is clearly an attempt to take advantage of the shortcomings of lemmy's algorithm to force reactionary content onto lemmygrad users without any ability to shout it down. Posting that shit would catch you a permaban on Hexbear, and I'm surprised to see it handled any differently on the 'grad.
Our blueprint is that users are allowed to create communities and then moderate them as they wish (within site rules and some soft limits), as there's more than enough communities to go around. The process works, because if there's a suspicious forum being created the community comes together to discuss it like here and takes a collective decision!
Not handled different per se. Probably just unnoticed or waiting a few posts to see what it turns out to be.
My rationale here is intentional locking of not just the community to only the single moderator and poster but also all the posts themselves indicates on the balance they knew what they were posting was wrong, against instance rules and so on and intentionally used such locking as an attempt to prevent these posts from blowing up into critical discussions that would turn against them, get them called out, and get the whole thing shut down and thus a sign of knowledge it was wrong, and active attempts to evade the rules.
And as such that this offense should be considered not an accident, not a little boo-boo, not a tiny little mistake from someone new to this, not a learning experience, but intentional, bad faith, malicious against our users and thus not deserving of any leniency that might be shown someone who had allowed engagement. Not deserving of any benefit of the doubt as it were to any explanations they might offer.
I think it shouldn't matter if the person who posted this comes in here, red paint on their hands sobbing how they didn't know and apologize which is like the thief caught in their den sobbing to the police only then that they knew it was wrong, not of genuine desire for repentance but part of a cynical strategy to appear remorseful and lessen punishment.
Additionally, the sidebar describes the content as "useful" that's a positive connotation, not neutral, not critical. They can't claim they were meaning to post this as dunking content because 1) it's against site rules to create another shitreactionaries say community and 2 their sidebar and lack of their own commentary (I have archived the sub in case they change this) indicates they agree with it. The sus nature of the locking takes even the questionable and defensible parts I think into criminal territory. Much as trying to hide or destroy evidence often indicates a guilty mind at work.
I don't want to agree with this, but I think you may be right, I very much would be willing to accept a "I'm sorry I
got caughttried to do this." sort of excuse, but that's probably far too soft. I seem to be going to bat for this much harder than most under the idea that it was possibly supposed to be against this particular source that they keep posting, but if that were the case, why ban comments?As one of the users who interacted the most with this person I have to recognize that you are completely right here. Creating a whole new community supposedly about violence against men when there is already a community for that, locking it so that only him can make posts and comments, then proceeding to post whatever that shit is without any possibility of push-back, not to mention his immediate antagonistic and accusatory tone and hiding behind "no u"s when confronted and the fact that he IMMEDIATELY deleted his account without bothering to try to make a case for himself after being caught... all of that is just too suspicious. We are a safe space for oppressed minorities in an oppressive world, we can't afford to give benefits of the doubt when this much against him.
Did not take me very long from learning about the existence of this community, to agreeing wholeheartedly with you. I feel that putting controversial content up and locking discussion is as bad faith as you can be.
Absolutely, community has to be removed. It is definitely part of the mysoginy pipeline targeting disenfranchised men.
Based on the discussion here, we decided to remove that community. Thank you to everyone here for doing work in researching what this was about.
o7
We removed that community, and were going to temp ban demoncracy, but they appeared to delete their account instead.
I was wondering about that one. I wanted to ask some questions about why it was being shared, but you know, the comments were locked. I think sharing questionable sources is fine if people want to discuss them, but not allowing discussion implies that they aren't comfortable with that discussion (like the person posting this knows this isn't a good source, and fears people pointing that out).
I would personally move to have it no longer have locked comment sections, and clear and appropriate discussions about the source in question (perhaps even a disclaimer) at the top of every shared article. We can still learn things from awful sources, even if the thing we are learning is "how awful sources will twist and manipulate language and sympathy to sound more reliable"
EDIT: I'm now thinking the community should be deleted, and not just simply opened up to comments. It adds nothing and is just posting manosphere crap masquerading as leftist content, with no sign of criticism or analysis of that content. Adding comments won't help, as we already have shit reactionaries say for that sort of stuff.
We can still learn things from awful sources, even if the thing we are learning is “how awful sources will twist and manipulate language and sympathy to sound more reliable”
The question really becomes "is that actually the case tho", I feel. Which, I have my doubts; but the last time I got my dander up about a community that was around here, it turned out to be a total necro that somehow had made its way back into trending.
No, this one is being posted in actively by the sole moderator of the community, it's one person sharing these articles for unknown reasons, because they don't allow discussion.
EDIT: I'm not saying you're wrong about this being disingenuous, I'm saying that I don't know the motivation here and don't want to jump conclusions, but it is looking more and more like you're on the money.
The sidebar literally says "This is community solely for reposting their very useful infographics."
Useful. Useful. That's a positive connotation. Not that this despicable shit they're posting, not that they're dunking on them, not that it is trash (which already belongs in shitreactionariessay) but that it is USEFUL.
And what's sad is if they hadn't been so obvious we'd have a lot of people giving them the benefit of the doubt when they wouldn't if this person was doing anti-BLM racist dog-whistling instead of sexist dog-whistling, if this person was doing anti-trans dog-whistling they wouldn't get any benefit of the doubt and I'm asking they not get any here given the strong evidence of intent with the locking to prevent feedback.
I wish people wouldn't give this person the benefit of the doubt. If you're going to post content from a place to a dedicated community you created, using lemmygrad resources to rehost it and then denying others the opportunity to critically engage with it, you'd better be damn sure that it isn't reactionary, isn't hateful, isn't against site rules. If it's questionable, ask others, simply allow engagement like every other damn community on the website.
I really do not think evasion on technicalities and "oh I didn't understand how this worked" should work here. You don't get to claim to be a smol bean not good at running a lemmy community person when the content in question is hateful and the evidence against you is this bad. It doesn't matter that devoid of all context it may be fine. Devoid of context, "all lives matter" sounds fine, in light of BLM however we know what it really is. It'd be like posting suicide statistics of purely CIS people, not elaborating, a few times mentioning trans people and insinuating they get too much attention and just continuing to post that and insist you just care about cis people and they need a voice too because the voice of the trans people is too loud. The voice of men in this conversation must start with acknowledging clearly that women are disadvantaged by patriarchy, that women suffer the most from gendered violence.
It's cherry-picking to sew a narrative whose unspoken implication is "those feminists hate men, we need to talk less about women's problems and more about how much it sucks to be a man".
Since looking more into it since I wrote this post I have changed my mind. I was too conciliatory in my language. So let me be clear. I think the moderator should be permanently banned.
I'm being more lenient than most because the admin seems to be very young, and so I would say is better off being corrected and informed of their inappropriate behaviour rather than being kicked out entirely. But ultimately it is the admin's decision as to what they would like to do. It isn't our community's job to tolerate toxic ideas and give forgiveness to people supporting them, especially if they're aware of their support being something our community would disapprove of (as the inability to comment seems to indicate).
From what I understand of the admin of the community, they are trans, young and have quite a lot of hangups and issues that they are working through in not particularly healthy ways, I'm worried that kicking them out entirely will deny them a potentially vital lifeline, though I do agree that the community should be banned (and if they continue to showcase support for toxic ideas they should be kicked out too). But I think my red line is a bit looser than a lot of other people's here. I think it is better to make it clear this behaviour is unacceptable rather than kicking them out outright, but if they are kicked out I would respect that decision, I understand why people would want that.
They still haven't commented here about their rationale, but have posted multiple times in their community since then, so I'm becoming increasingly convinced that they know what they are doing is wrong and are hoping it flies under the radar. I suppose in my circumstance of not banning them, they could try a similar thing in the future, if they did, I would firmly support a ban.
EDIT: Fogor words
For what it's worth, I agree with the sentiment here. This community should definitely be banned and deleted, but banning the user entirely might not be necessary just yet.
Since when does youngness excuse anything when it comes to an account on this website?
Would we tolerate a young anti-communist here just because they're young? Would we tolerate a young racist and white supremacist spreading that stuff just because they're young? Would we tolerate a young homo/trans-phone just because they're young even while they spread lies and hate?
Why then do misogynists get this special pass from their fellow men? Yes it's widespread, so is white supremacy, so is believing imperialist propaganda, so are many forms of bigotry and chauvinism we don't accept from users who have accounts on this site.
We should tolerate people who are willing to listen, remain quiet, and change their shitty behaviour. This person was not willing to do that, so they should not be tolerated. I think you're reading my comments out of order. I was their biggest defender in this thread, because I think it is fair that at least someone gives them the benefit of the doubt, but since their "explanation" of their actions I flipped completely the other way. They weren't willing to listen, and they weren't willing to learn. I was initially operating under the assumption that they were a new user making a mistake, but you had convinced me of the opposite.
I don't understand why you're behaving this way after you got what you asked for, this is supposed to be a place to debate an issue, not to just agree with the original poster and ban things without discussion. The discussion moved entirely in your favour and entirely against them, but you still seem quite upset by the whole thing, I don't get it.
Thus they must agree with the articles is my contention. They agree, they know others do not agree.
Further it is against site rules to post shitreactionariessay type content outside of that community. This is also not that, it is posted uncritically by one person trying to spread the message and viewpoint of the blog. It's like if I share a bunch of Nazi memes about black people and crime without comment, in a community I created exclusively for that purpose, that is stated to be for that purpose and not only do I not critically comment on them but I lock the comments to prevent anyone else from dunking on them. What's the difference between me at that point and an unironic Nazi trying to spread their propaganda? The answer is none, distinction without a different.
This is misogynist propaganda, it violates the cardinal rules of the site. It was obviously done this way to prevent feedback, dunking, etc. As such the originator should not get the benefit of the doubt. I have no doubt they will if confronted claim ignorance, claim they only saw some good bits, make up all kinds of excuses that sound plausible enough and I am calling on the admins of this instance if they believe the blog referenced to be misogynist, to be MRA, to be reactionary or to have such content in any amounts to do the right thing to protect users and not accept excuses however finely tailored but to act and remove this person permanently. Just as they would if it was crypto-homophobia, just as if it was crypto-racism.
The locking of comments (and posts to a lesser degree) IMO is a slam dunk indicator of intention to not allow criticism or discussion and when posting reactionary content that already violates the rule against posting outside of one community for that, shows that by virtue of not criticizing such content, not offering explanation, and not allowing others to critically engage with it, only to engage with it on the terms of the dubious authors that they agree with it.
You're absolutely right, I agree with you, I've edited my original comment to reflect that. If this was a "shit reactionaries say" sort of thing, they would just have posted them there, you're most likely right, they are in support of these ideas, but want to be non-committal because they know they would receive a lot of pushback for them.
They also have posted to the community since this post went up, and haven't appeared here to explain themselves, which potentially further adds to this idea. (though it could very easily just be them not seeing this post).
I suspect the locked comments thing is a mistake as the sidebar explains it's only supposed to be posting that's locked, to allow the community to function as a kind of blog. That said, after seeing the first couple of posts in my feed, I've been ignoring the community and hovering over the block button as it doesn't seem to be Marxist content and that's what I'm here for.
Though still not having any option to post comments until now and not asking anyone for help with enabling comments but not allowing posting sounds like they did know what they were doing, and didn't want comments.
See, now that is going a bit further than I would want to go. I doubt they would continue posting in the community if they honestly thought they got 0 engagement every time.
Maybe, but it's only been going for three days and communities take time to build so it's not that strange.
That is true, one of the reasons I've never started a community is because I would shut the whole thing down if I got 0 traction over my first few posts. I'm probably projecting my own insecurities onto this situation there.
You were right! The comments were intentionally locked. I agree with the edit in your earlier post.
The evidence with the locking of all these posts shows in my mind that the OP knew what they were posting was wrong, reactionary, anti-Marxist content and was afraid of being called out on it. That in my mind cinches it over from just someone being ignorant and posting bad stuff that they're not knowledgeable on or maybe are holding over some reactionary views from before becoming a communist to the fact they KNEW it was bad, and wanted to hide that, didn't want to be called out, wanted to sneak it in without discussion and that in my mind should take this kind of offense from a slap on the wrist and an assignment to be educated to a permanent ban for intentionally trying to spread this stuff knowing it was against instance rules, knowing it was bigotry, knowing it was reactionary and trying their best to keep it going for as long as possible by lowering ability for people to critically engage.
I agree that they likely knew this was reactionary content and didn't want a response calling them out on that, but do you mean banning the user's account entirely, or just removing the community? I'm fine with the latter, not fine with the former before the person posting this content explains their rationale behind this. (Though if they refuse to do so, it is probably because they know it is because they just don't want to be called out.)
If this is the people's court, I do think that people doing things like this should explain themselves and their actions, rather than the rest of us assuming the worst. (Though obviously if their defence is a backhanded non-answer or they don't reply at all, we probably will be forced to assume the worst.)
I think given their responses here and the general bad faith. I can't come to any conclusion but this person was spreading sexist propaganda of a particularly insidious type cloaked in progressive language.
How would we react if a crypto-Nazi was spreading crypto-racism under the same circumstances with a sus website, comment locking, etc?
How would we react if it was trans-phobia, homophobia, etc?
Women's issues get a little stickier than those because of many factors including how old patriarchy is, predating modern racism and concepts of whiteness. Because of the buy-in of many of the victims (women), because of how it binds both men and women, benefits men, benefits some particular women. Harms some men, etc. It's a very tangled mess compared to white supremacy. But I think it's helpful to do that kind of comparative thinking and ask ourselves: Are women worth protecting from those spreading hate based on their immutable characteristics any less than any other group? If we are angrily, viciously swift on giving the boot (rightfully) to homophobic bigots, to racist bigots, etc why not these?
I wonder what prompted the OP to make a community dedicated to reposting stuff from a blog that has been inactive for 2 years. How did he even come across it?
Anyway if you're reading this demoncracy, please keep all this in perspective. These are just posts on a niche online forum. This will all blow over soon either way so please please please take care of yourself.
Inviting @Demoncracy@lemmygrad.ml to make their case before a decision is taken.
I am deeply troubled by misandry and systemic misandry being shielded in leftist spaces using leftist language to diminish the issues, playing key role in conservatives (who participate in systemic misandry themselves) being able to take advantage of struggling men, keeping the issues completely unaddressed, seldom ever spoken of, with people using leftist jargon to perpetrate the status quo.
I am going to be leaving Lemmy as a whole. My "vibe is off" apparently.
I removed things relating to my private life, but left everything else, in case it won't get removed once I delete my account. - Stating this in case someone takes offense to that and makes up conspiracy theories about me hiding something.
I am deeply troubled by misandry and systemic misandry being shielded in leftist spaces using leftist language to diminish the issues, playing key role in conservatives (who participate in systemic misandry themselves) being able to take advantage of struggling men, keeping the issues completely unaddressed, seldom ever spoken of, with people using leftist jargon to perpetrate the status quo.
If this was the case, why go about dealing with this in such a roundabout way? Why not make a community directly devoted to discussing misandry instead of one devoted to a manosphere blog that seems to dismiss women's issues just as often as it brings up legitimate men's issues? And more importantly, if you wanted to start a discussion on this topic, why prevent commenting? How do you expect a discussion to take place if people aren't actually allowed to discuss things? It just seems like a very counter-productive thing to do.
Because I take issue with people branding and dismissing things like
men being raped literally not acknowledged by law, hidden from statistics, little boys making the most of children being available for adoption with adoptive parents vastly preferring to adopt girls - the things I reposted with sources
as misogyny. I am very aware the left has issues with misandry indistinguishable from liberal one, I merely wanted to post sources mentioning real issues, because I neither never see them in leftist spaces or they get shut down as misogyny.
I'm afraid that I don't understand your reasoning. You...assumed this place would call things misogyny instead of misandry so your solution was to post articles from an often misogynistic website and not allow discussion of the topic at all?
I think you may be misunderstanding intersectionality a little bit here. Women's and men's issues stem from the same place: the patriarchy. Talking about one does not diminish the other, and trying to solve one does not mean the other doesn't exist. Discussing one doesn't mean we can never discuss the other, if you had created a place to discuss men's issues, that would've been far better received than what has happened here. The problem is that you've been sharing a very problematic website and have seemed to have been trying to eliminate any discussion of that (I'm not saying this was your intention, that is just how it has come across, as you haven't given anyone an opportunity for discussion, including yourself). Again, I just don't see how your goals align with your actions here, I don't see how you expected the response you wanted from what you have been doing.
Because they're dishonest and afraid of discussion. Because their intent was not to have a conversation, not to create better men, to better themselves, not to be progressive, not to have a conversation with Marxists about positive manhood and the issues of patriarchy but to shove MRA propaganda down the throats of vulnerable young men on this and linked instances, to hook them, radicalize them. It is dishonest, splintering, non-comradely, and predatory behavior.
We have and have had a menslib sub for far longer than the sub they made existed (or their account). They deliberately chose not to use that, not to create a menslib sub but one centered around an MRA blog that was so problematic they decided to censor talking about it.
I know this person has been a prolific poster and seemed nice but can we please accept they're probably a misogynist or spreading misogyny and unwilling to deal with push-back on their takes? The evidence is all there, yet people keep fleeing from it, trying to make excuses for them and I'm sorry but I feel like if this was any other group, any other situation. If the blog was a transphobic blog and they'd done the same thing for discussing cis people issues that people would not be as forgiving given the tone, and certain tells.
We don't even know that their whole sob story about medical issues and housing and all that is true. And even if it was, no tailism, we have to hold ourselves higher than that, being oppressed in one way does not give one license to oppress others and hide behind the fact you're part of some other group.
One cannot start a conversation about the issues of white people without first acknowledging the issues of white supremacy and the greater problems of POC without attracting and ending up being white supremacist in nature.
I'll reiterate, if this person made a community about a weird blog no one heard about and locked it down like this and that blog was about police violence against white men for instance and it centered their suffering and downplayed the issues of POC interactions with police I do not think that person would get the same leeway this person is getting, certainly I hope not.
One cannot have an extended conversation about straight issues without first acknowledging the oppression of the LGBTQ+ community first or you invite gay-bashers.
It is the same here.
This blog was dishonest. Quite possibly it is run by the same person who ran the community (demoncracy) for all we know. It did not frame it that way and the poster (demoncracy) did not do the bare minimum when spreading content from a reactionary source of prefacing it with a disclaimer. It would take so little effort to do that and pass a cursory vibe check.
Even if they acknowledged it as reactionary you have to admit it violated rules against shitreactionariessay type posts and further that the only point of such posts is to dunk on, debate, discuss them and that locking contents means they were creating billboards for users to passively consume, not critically consume out of this kind of content.
There's just so much wrong here if you stop giving them the benefit of the doubt. Too many pieces that cannot fit except that the person in question is into misogynistic thinking and trying to spread that on a Marxist-Leninist website as carefully as they can. They edited their posts the other day last night to include links to scientific publications in support of their scientific-sexism, nothing else. That's doubling down in defense.
You're the head admin, you can do whatever you want. And I appreciate everything you've done to make lemmygrad a safe, welcoming, interesting place (as evidenced by the age of my account).
I agree that menslib needs attention, but not from people who act this way, not from MRA blogs that take this persecuted by feminists, silenced, thing that doesn't include and center in the womens' struggle the acknowledgement of the fact that while patriarchy harms men, it primarily harms women and men need to understand those harms, not just boo-hoo and cry over their own little troubles as a result of it. Only once that is made clear and understood can men begin to un-harm themselves, they can't toss off the obligations of patriarchy towards themselves while keeping them on women, while not learning how to make sure they don't put them on women and perpetuate it, that's just giving them more freedom without liberating women. We are Marxists, we are more than self-interested, that means understanding and including the struggles of others. Intentional omission is a deliberate tactic by bigots and unacceptable.
I think inviting this person back after what they've done and they've offered no defense nor could they is the wrong decision.
It sends the wrong message about the value of this one person compared to all the women comrades here and their safety, compared to the safety of underage or young impressionable men on this instance who they were attempting to victimize and draw into this reactionary website and potentially way of thinking. I wish you would reconsider. I know I myself came off kind of weakly in my initial post. I sometimes struggle still with trying to be nice, the way my parents raised me, to be deferential. This kind of thing has shaken me though and I don't think this person belongs on this website. Because they did infiltrate it, they did engage in hard to spot reactionary behavior. They are a threat, not a good faith user.
They got caught red-handed. They were careful enough not to be an open bigot (they had no choice, if they were less clever they'd have been zeroed much earlier) but what more proof would you need? If I'd not posted this, let them continue to post content for another month, would there have been any more evidence of the facts at hand that couldn't be dismissed in the same way? It would just be more locked posts for a community whose very existence is a site rule violation as it focuses on a reactionary website and spreading its content uncritically. Community sidebar called the content "useful infographics".
I ask you respectfully to reconsider that given the overwhelming evidence that has no other reasonable explanation. I believe this person acted in bad faith, will continue to do so. I do not think they are a comrade, I do not think they make lemmygrad better. They had all the time to contribute actual good mens-lib content, discussions, etc, including in their own sub but they didn't.
Especially when they've shown no remorse, no interest in engaging in good faith discussion, just dipped out rather than face the music and scorn of the users here and initially what tipped me to this was the locking of any ability for others to interact or engage with their content critically. They've just acted defensive. In what way is such a person a good fit for this website when their beliefs include oppressive thinking towards half the world's population and spreading sexist propaganda to other users here who may be vulnerable to it?
Because I think they'll be back. I strongly think this given people mention this wasn't their first account. And I think they shouldn't be allowed back and should be given the boot if they try another account. But I'm not an admin here. Just a member of that half of the world whose oppression this person was denying and continued to deny to the last.
Thank you for taking the time to read all my rambling. I hope you might see some sense in it.
Just to recontextualize nameless partisan, they weren't banned for changing their name, we understood it as a provocation (which they had been doing for a while), but they were banned for a different reason which was the conclusion for the culmination of 5 months of trying to provoke the mod team without ever wanting to engage in dialogue. I previously wrote about it here: https://lemmygrad.ml/comment/2650277
I have changed my stance on the communist party of 'israel' since then, though I still think there's some amount of depth to its existence, but they really dropped the ball on October 7 lol. Regardless it's not a big point in the events around this user.
edit: otherwise I agree completely with point number 2, I would have made it myself lol. With the tools we have at our disposal we do the best we can, I think in general the community is good at self-moderating as seen from this thread. It leads to a culture of self-responsibility. And yeah, we (I) have no interest in doing extensive research on every new account to make sure they're not an alt. The general rule of thumb is that if we can't tell they're an alt then what's the harm? If they got banned the first time they'll get banned a second time under a different account, they'll slip up eventually. Unless they actually changed and improved, in which case we won't ban them. And in the meantime we run the risk of banning a completely innocent person based on conjecture.
That's strange, maybe because OP deleted their account and so it deleted the post as well except for mods. I'll paste my comment:
That is not what happened at all. It’s what Nameless_Partisan claimed happened.
Partisan had always been heated and quick to ban on the community they created. Early on they showed they were not open to discussion on their opinions. This is fine, we don’t police how people carry themselves. But it shows their personality. They were not banned for this behaviour.
Later they went into a diatribe against another user on the Palestine community, completely unprompted, after that person asked for advice. The person in question was an Israeli communist and I know that raises a lot of eyebrows (it did to me too) but there is a lot of depth to Israeli communists, most of them being Palestinians who were naturalized after Nakba, and the communist party of Israel calling for the dissolution of this state. This attack was unprompted and I was the one who banned them for a measly 3 days and only from the Palestine community for a violation of rule 3. Not difficult to find it was me in the modlog as I’m the only mod of the Palestine community and I also told them in the comments, to which they never replied but later brought up in their farewell post, leaving it stirring without wanting to engage with us (the admins) as had always been the case.
They could have taken the time to ask the person in question what it meant to them to be a communist in such a country, etc, but instead decided to start attacking a comrade on Lemmygrad out of nowhere.
We built a community here and while we don’t ask users where they come from there is some basic level of comradeship that builds itself with the account vetting system in place and the fact that we’re all MLs. If you can’t even afford that basic amount of politeness to anyone then yes, that is a breach of rule 3.
But their comment to the user in question was not deleted. Nameless instead deleted their entire comment history later on so I couldn’t even tell you what they told that Israeli person.
Their comment that was deleted was essentially saying it was okay to kill Israeli children. An admin decided to remove it as it could bring trouble to Lemmygrad. But we’ve never deleted comments about targetting settlers or calling for the end of Israel, etc. We make these comments ourselves too.
They were not banned for this comment, it was merely deleted. This is also around the time they changed their bio in their profile to say “Banned for being mean to an israeli colonizer.” but again a- they did not know if that person was a colonizer (and if they don’t know that there are Arabs with second-class Israeli citizenship then they are not qualified to speak so much about Palestine) and b- they were temp banned from a single community.
They were also not called a terrorist but their comment was deleted for advocating terrorism. This might seem pedantic, but the distinction is important. Calling someone a terrorist is an accusation. Deleting a comment for advocating terrorism is not placing the blame on them, just that the wording of the comment, while accidental, came off this way. This is when they renamed their account as “mean_arab_terrorist”.
Later, they made their farewell post where they brought their version of events, but we debunked it there as well, and Partisan never once replied to the comments.
Since their original farewell post was locked, someone made a different post in Comradeship to talk about that farewell post. Edit: found it again: https://lemmygrad.ml/post/617510
When you put all of this together it starts to look like they were more interested in stirring up trouble than actually engaging with the platform, most of the time posting in their own community from which they indiscriminately banned people who disagreed with them. But again, this is not a bannable offense on Lemmygrad as there are plenty of other communities to participate on.
Despite this, Partisan was not banned from the website and the entire admin team was in agreement that they were not easy to manage, so to speak, but that nothing was ban-worthy by itself. What was problematic to us was that at no point did NP try to contact us to explain their issues, instead preferring to indirectly talk at us by changing their display name or profile bio. I don’t think they ever once replied to any of my comments either.
They came back 3 months after that farewell post, which they locked right after they made it (but we did not touch in any way), to say in Arabic “May God’s peace, mercy, and blessings be upon you. I am a Shiite. I no longer participate on this site because it is occupied by Satan. May God protect you.”
Totally a normal thing to say 3 months after you made your goodbyes and you got the slightest slap on the wrist for not obeying the site rules which are prominently displayed.
Someone reported that comment and that is when Partisan finally got banned from Lemmygrad for inciting trouble on a website that they willingly left.
The first ever comment from demoncracy was talking about how they were used to hexbear, so yeah not a new user, or was lurking
I don't think the two are necessarily the same person, wrecker "behaviour" is a thing at all because they tend to follow predictable patterns, they try to ingratiate themselves with the community, then push against the boundaries just a little bit, to see if there is any reaction, if no reaction, they escalate, and continue to escalate, using the tolerance of their previous behaviour as justification for their current, more extreme behaviour. If they are called out too early, they just cut and run, wreckers rely on having enough of a reputation within a group to make people bend the rules for them, so if their earliest and softest attempts don't work, they'll just start again from scratch.
Just kinda shouting out here as the admin of the menslib sub.
I have this tendency to have so much drive to complete something for a couple of days, weeks, months, etc. and then burn myself out and find it difficult to dig back in.
Plus a lot of hilarious shit has been going on in my life that has kept me from engaging with the comm like I want to.
Anyway, point being: I'm going to try to be more active and hopefully give the sub the booster shot it needs. Please use the menslib sub for posts surrounding men's liberation from violence and patriarchy!!
Perhaps it would be reasonable for you to care to corroborate - what it is that made you think "misandry" is "shielded" here. Simply said - please provide proof. Judging by the phrase "leaving Lemmy as a whole" - it seems to me you're not coming from an honest place.
So, instead of doing that you're just going to downvote this comment, huh?
Yea, I'm evil and deceitful! Shit like this makes my blood boil. People dismiss men being raped literally not acknowledged by law, hidden from statistics, little boys making the most of children being available for adoption with adoptive parents vastly preferring to adopt girls - the things I reposted with sources - hiding behind labeling those as misogyny. How am I supposed to wish to engage with you when you do such deplorable things, not to mention automatically jumping to pretending I'm a bad person to discredit me? Of course I do not wish to engage with you.
You said I joined a week ago. Your account is 6 months old. This is my new account, because my @ differed to the username I used, so I made a new one. Even in the short week with this new account I participated vastly more in the community as a whole than you - with plenty to reference to who I am as a person.
...People dismiss men being raped... Does this apply to this community, as well as specific members of this community? Can you point to specific people dismissing such things? ..little boys making the most of children being available for adoption.. Even if that were true, (which, judging by the quality of the sources provided I find dubious at best) - how would it imply misandry in any way? How would it discredit this community, specifically? How do you explain locking the comment section barring any discussion and any counter-proof? "You said I joined a week ago" That's what I saw when I looked into your account, it's what the website told me. I did not know you had a different account, and I wasn't supposed to know - there's nothing in your bio that could imply you having other accounts, other members told me. Most importantly - what does that have to do with your claims? "..I participated vastly more in the community as a whole than you.." This is not a participation-measuring contest. What are you saying here?
Yes, I consider the responses this thread got dismissing those, since those were the things I posted.
how would it imply misandry in any way?
Excuse me? How would dismissing issues affecting men specifically imply misandry???
How do you explain locking the comment section barring any discussion and any counter-proof?
Counter proof to men getting raped? Holy fuck - this is exactly why I didn't want comments because vile stuff like this is mind boggling to me.
I did not know you had a different account
not a participation-measuring contest. What are you saying here?
If you were active, you'd see me, including who I am as a person, but you instead chose to call me dishonest with no proof, debasing me as a person because I share information regarding issues affecting men, which, again, is vile, and exactly why I do not want to engage, because the dehumanization and active apathy towards men's issues mortifies me.
Excuse me? How would dismissing issues affecting men specifically imply misandry???
Skipping a shit ton of issues I have with this... Let's put it aside for a moment. Who exactly is dismissing these issues? You've been asked to provide proof, not to repeat your statement.
Counter proof to men getting raped? Holy fuck - this is exactly why I didn’t want comments because vile stuff like this is mind boggling to me.
The source you provided clearly has manosphere bias. People provide "proof" climate change is a myth, that often looks like a well-written article. Does that mean we should accept such "proof" when someone posts it? I'm not even saying it is necessarily a lie, I'm saying you deliberately post something and then hide in a hole plugging your ears, rejecting any potential criticism of the source - that's what locking the comment section looks like.
If you were active, you’d see me, including who I am as a person
Why? Also, you can check out my user page as well. What level of activity should a person have to know every single user in this community?
I see you.
Thats why I said the vibe is off, but it's hard to pinpoint which issue I have.
I think the main issue is the lack of opportunity for discussion on the material you posted. These matters are hard to make sense of, and are too easy to be shifted back into oppression. It happens with the radfem, or black supremacist ideas. It's even more dangerous for men, since we're already in the oppressors position, most of the time.
The question you pose is a good one. How do we welcome and embrace men that suffered abuse? There's lots of us. The synthesis of the content you offer, if followed through, has dangerous social side effects that have to be considered, and are not generally aligned to recent communist consensus. It can be challenged, sure. But just posting without discussing isn't a proper challenge.
The problem is patriarchy. The problem is the work relationships. The problem is exploration of people by people, suppression of their needs.
Implied on what you post is "stop looking at woman's problems, look at men's problems!". That's not the best approach, and I think it would be freeing to you to try to figure out why.
Really nice of you to bring this up. 100% sus, the admin joined Lemmygrad, idk, like a week ago and immediately started pumping out these posts. This needs to be investigated
To be fair, he was already on lemmygrad before but he recently made a new account for some reasons. But yea, all the rest I agree with you this is really bad.
This may come accross as rude but I swear, online socialist communities never fail to attract the weirdest people.
I'm finding that community and its admin's vibe just off. Hard to pinpoint what's wrong, but i wanted to add to the general feeling.
Somehow, it doesn't feel like it belongs here.
I honestly am confused with this whole situation. What exactly is wrong with the content?
The content itself is often mostly fine, is a little "not passing the vibe check" at times, but the website they are sourced from is often misogynistic and associated with toxic "manosphere" beliefs. And the fact that discussion isn't allowed on the community means no one can discuss these issues or the content in general. At best it is pointless and these infographics could be posted elsewhere, at worst it is actively spreading toxic misogynistic ideas masquerading as "men's liberation."
Exactly. It's not even the question of what data is being provided, but how it is being presented - what part gets the focus and what gets omitted, to make the readers come to a specific conclusion. The original source clearly presents the data in a very disingenuous way due to their specific agenda.
The inability to critically assess the pieces makes it all worse.
Yes, I was hoping it was an honest mistake, but it feels like the admin of the community is falling for a lot of manosphere manipulation, they don't start with being openly sexist and misogynistic, they start with faux sincerity about men's issues, then start undermining women's issues and then acting like men's issues are never talked about and "those awful leftist feminists" never actually discuss them at all, and pretend all men are incapable of suffering. (Which is ridiculous, as if anyone speaks to a feminist, they would hear about how the patriarchy harms men by forcing them into specific roles in society the same way it harms women.) Then it pushes into full on hatred and blaming of women for societal problems and they're practically incel by that point.
Imagine saying "the US is not racist" just because "well, 'hwite' people get imprisoned, too!"
Does that imply that impoverished "hwite" proles don't get unjustly incarcerated? No. Does that imply we should dismiss that fact? Also, no. Does it all imply that systemic racism in the US is a made up thing? Absolutely fucking not. Though I'm sure the ShaPeabrains, the Penis Pragers and the Crowders would like you to believe so.
Yeah, this sounds like this person just didn't really understand intersectionality very well, though their response is concerning. I'm guessing since that they are "on trial" they feel very defensive and are getting quite agitated (I would be too if I thought I was contributing to a community and have people talk about me the way they've been talked about, it would hurt.) I just hope they actively consider why they've been talked about this way and try to improve and learn from their mistakes, even if they decide Lemmygrad isn't the place for them.
That reminds me of that time I posted an anti-imperialist take from Sinfest, a far-right webcomic as a broken clock moment. (Granted, I asked admins to remove it if they were uncomfortable.)
Yeah, stuff like this often notices a genuine problem in society (men do have issues with suicide and SA against men is often massively under reported) but they take a real problem and use it to steer people towards reaction, in this case they take the problem of men's issues and blame feminists or women in general.
