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:

  1. 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.

  2. Uphold TC69 thought by starting up a book club (and hopefully more to follow) on feminist theory and encouraging mass participation, particularly from the he/him's on the site. "The Will to Change" by bell hooks has been suggested by multiple people as a great starting point but please feel free to suggest any other works.

  3. 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

  4. Encouraging [namely femme] participation in /c/womenby and taking steps to revitalize that sub as an excellent source of discussion on feminism and intersectionality

  5. Holding another mod drive to get more folks into mod positions in our communities who can help weed out reactionary attitudes

  6. Encouraging users to use the report button often on any post that seems even remotely sus, with the promise that no one's going to be punished for "report abuse" for reporting posts in obvious good faith

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 feminism trans-heart

  • ProletarianDictator [none/use name]
    ·
    2 months ago

    Agree completely on your analysis of TwoX, but I do think there is some utility from lifting content for discussion here, even if done somewhat haphazardly without curation.

    Part of the reason Hexbear is so cool with respect to AES is that we have near constant discussions of Imperialism, the global south, unequal exchange, and the soft and hard implements of imperial coercion.

    When this place first started up as a CTH life raft, that understanding of AES wasn't anywhere close to developed, and people here tended to line up with edgy Bernie bros or anarchists with western chauvinist brainworms.

    That line only developed because we repeatedly had these discussions, people would have their lib blow ups, but overall we collectively gathered, challenged, and refined knowledge. We have plenty of comrades here who could quote specific parts of Marx or Lenin and paraphrase theory off the dome, emparting their comrades with some of what they have learned and encouraged others to read the theory to best suit

    We need to develop that same phenomenon for radical feminism!

    So now we look like jackasses to anyone with deep subject matter knowledge of radical feminism, further alienating the women who would really help us grow from our spaces. Not that the status quo is that repulsive, but I'm certain we look like the types of bros that would be class reductionists and dismiss intersectional superstructure elements out of hand.

    We don't currently exercise our feminism muscles enough, so we tend not to think about working them out. Now our intellectual physique is unevenly developed, and we don't share much lit or have active threads on those topics. We caught the equivalent of being humbled by the squat rack because we do chest day 4x a week.

    I think most people here want to develop their thinking in more spheres of social justice than Marxism and geopolitics, but we don't have the same vanguard dynamic where the most well-read on the subject matter shares their knowledge, points to new resources, and discusses the content with those with less knowledge so far.

    We know reddit and other spaces are poisoned with liberalism and electoralism, meaning we won't enjoy participating there, so we must develop it here. Copying content from lib feminist spaces is a low effort way to get started exercising that thought. Especially because applying Marxist critiques to it forces you to engage with it and leaves you wanting to supplement it with additional feminist literature.