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 
Good list of action. Number 1 needs to be adopted sitewide.
Quite frankly, I'm disappointed to hear this wasn't already how point 1 in the Hexbear Code of Conduct was being enforced:
I wonder if the other subclauses are being taken seriously either.
from what i've observed, i'd say we need to have one of these on race*, covid, and body shaming
*it's not really my place to start this conversation imo but i have seen some of our poc comrades complaining about how white hexbear can be, to the point of being unbearable (sorry) at times
As a
, I demand you remove the sorry from your post.
(Am I doing this right?)
But seriously, yes, we probably need explicit zero-tolerance for all of these.
There has historically been leeway given to established users and I really hate it. I’ve seen big names do some abhorrent shit but get excused because they’ve been around for some time.
In theory it should be, we acknowledge that we've failed to use a heavier hand on a lot of issues, not just misogyny. This thread has been invaluable to us for getting feedback from the users and we're taking everything said in here seriously.
Transmedicalism should be next on the docket as well as certain slurs that people try to “reclaim.”