Ppl that make these kinds of comics clearly do not socialize with others irl. This only happens online with other trolls, from everywhere on the spectrum of whatever group. But irl, most people are pretty decent.
The internet is part of real life. Internet trolls are real people behind their screens, and they live somewhere. Maybe they live far away from you and near this artist.
I agree. There is an added layer of depersonalization, but it’s still real life, just like driving in traffic. The same people who would be courteous in person could be cutting you off and being freely offensive on the road. The interactions are no less real, maybe even more real than some situations that prescribe some distancing, like a job interview or talking to a coworker, depending on how close you are.
Maybe they also don’t socialize because they never actually go out either. Just a bunch of asocials sitting in their respective moms basement trolling away.
Maybe the artist is a mum with a troll in her basement. Or maybe she has a shithead cousin who says this garbage at family reunions.
If you’re a digital artist, your domain is the internet. Your audience is the internet. Your medium is the internet. In that case, you’ll write about the internet.
The vast majority of ppl are decent. If others can’t find them, that’s a them problem.
I’m kinda with you on this. People are complex and for the most of their time they behave okaish.
No. Most people drive cars, despite the fact that they know cars are destroying all life on earth. Most people are capable of rationalising their behaviour to remove culpability for the consequences of their actions. Most people are evil, in the same kind of banal way that most people in Nazi Germany accepted the new way of doing things and didn’t fight back, because they felt they had too much to lose from resisting.
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Lmao, way to deflect. I didn’t say most ppl aren’t evil (not even addressing that your definition of evil isn’t even universally agreed upon), but I did say most ppl are actually pretty empathetic to the plight of others and thus decent in that regard.
Just like me. Here I am a very toxic one, but in the real world I consider myself a nice person
Isn’t that the whole point of social media? A cathartic outlet that doesn’t actually affect anyone or anything.
Yes, you little piece of shit
I was really hoping the comments here would be better.
Embarassing, tbh.I follow a lot of women on socials, including this artist, and this shit happens on pretty much every post they make. It’s crazy to me some of them have the willpower to continue creating and posting because i sure wouldn’t.
This meme is selling shovels, and the comments here are more than happy to dig holes it seems.
Can’t imagine why Lemmy is like this after carefully selecting the most opinionated Redditors for its community.
If it helps, I have no opinions. I’m just chaotic stupid alognment.
It does help, thank you.
I’ve said it before, and I’ll say it again. Ricky Rogatoni, you dispense the sage advice of a fool. As a self-identifying fool I always appreciate your input.
Yeah? Well that’s just like your opinion, man
People are reenacting the point of the comic in real time, it’s wild.
I’ve noticed this an uncomfortable amount on Lemmy. Being trans, I’ve started bringing up my pretransition experience/traumas living as a dude even if it’s not relevant whenever I talk about a women’s issue that effects me because I don’t get taken seriously otherwise.
Well, actually, lately I’ve taken up just not talking about women’s issues, and really just commenting less frequently over all, because this whole place is like a mine field of people who just wanna argue. Every time before I hit send I have to think “Is somebody gonna think this is about them and get pissed with me?” And 99% of the time the answer is yes.Pshhhh, noone here is going to argue with you. You’re wrong /s
Seriously though, sorry the internet is full of hatefull people. Thank you for what you have shared in the past. Some of us do benefit from hearing other people’s struggles, but just don’t comment as much. Negative engagement usually outweighs positive engagement on all social media platforms.
I’m sorry you had to deal with that lemmy is definitely a bit more wild in terms of strong opinions, some very cool people on here but also a lot of immaturity.
I’m not trans but isn’t that a normal thing to think before posting? I’m fine with saying to my friends “(wo)men have hurt me in the past, and it makes me less trustful of them” but I wouldn’t comment that publicly, since either I get weirdos saying “yeah I hate (wo)men too” or weirdos saying “the other sex does this but worse!” Either way they don’t get what I mean, so I’m going to be very careful with qualifying what I say. It’s a hot-button topic and it sucks I have to do that just to share an experience, but a lot of people are sensitive (myself included) to perceived attacks. I still get people misunderstanding it, but that’s usually 1/100 instead of 1/5. It sucks that it doesn’t feel like a group of friends, but there are a lot of communities on lemmy that will ban people acting like jerks (lemmy.blahaj.zone for one)
I suppose I just had higher expectations for Lemmy tbh. When I first joined on the first instance I found, the community was so nice, supportive, and in general just an amazing place to be where it felt like anybody could have a reasonable discussion about anything. It just really, really quickly devolved into what every other social media site is.
I did find using the app Connect to block lemmy.world where I assume most of the most toxic people land purely on account of its size instantly reduced toxicity in my feed by a massive amount, but it also unfortunately blocks half the content on the site and I also don’t like that I have to block plenty of reasonable users as collateral to achieve it..world is also the most commonly linked instance on reddit, so half the time you’re just dealing with angry redditors. Generally every time I say “wow this is so disappointing to see” it’s a .world post and the other half of the comments are trying to fight back against them. I think it’s just the nature of online communities that they get more toxic as they grow.
You’re definitely dodging more toxicity than you are positivity with blocking .world, every time I’ve seen just the worst comment ever it’s from .world. There might be an app or way to block the comments but not the posts from an instance, since nearly all .world posts seem fine (you could ask in the app community on lemmy, they’re generally super friendly). Sorry I can’t give better advice. Me personally I just stick to the positive communities and only brave the .world trenches if I’m feeling up to it (and make heavy use of blocking toxic communities)
I know I’m just one person, but your experiences are important and imo, necessary for women’s liberation (and human liberation more generally). I’m not going to say “you should share your experiences” because I get how exhausting it is to be challenged on basic shit all the time and that means commenting can be akin to self harm if overdone. I guess I’m just trying to expand that 1% of non-assholes into a larger percentage.
I say this as a cis woman whose feminism has gotten a hell of a lot more intersectional in recent years, in part due to trans friends. Knowing trans women in particular has helped me to feel more at home and happy in my own gender (femininity and its relationship with womanhood is complicated). Having lived as a guy for a chunk of your life no doubt means that your lived experience (especially with respect to gender) is messy and complex, but that’s great, because the world is messy and complex. At least, it would be great, if more people were open to listening to you when you share. I’m sorry that you have to do the cost:benefit analysis before commenting — that part is something I can relate to.
Honestly same thing happens when we talk about men.
Tons of women coming up, saying “women have it worse” and attempting to minimize the importance if men’s issues.
Let’s just listen to both sides for once, and make everyone heard. When everyone is given a platform to speak, there’s no need to interrupt each other.
Funnily enough you’re in the comic. Not that I think you intended that.
The comic is about the meta issue so it’s not quite the same imo
The comic is about how when people speak online online about women’s issues, dudes keep trying to make it about dudes.
The comic itself is someone talking online about women’s issues, and the comments are all men trying to make it about them.
It’s remarkably similar.
The comic is about how when people speak online online about women’s issues, dudes keep trying to make it about dudes.
This is a legitimate complaint in the situations where the topic is uniquely a women’s issue, and people are trying to redirect the conversation to something that really isn’t the same thing and is a separate issue so talking about that means you aren’t talking about the first thing anymore. But the meta issue of someone trying to talk about one group’s problems and getting hit by whataboutism, seems arguably more universal and might not be specifically a women’s issue, so saying something along the lines of “yeah this happens to us too it sucks”, could be supportive and not about shutting up discussion of the original topic.
This isn’t a universal complaint about the frustration of whataboutism.
This is a specific complaint about how any time women try to talk about women’s issues in a forum that may contain men, those men engage in disingenuous whataboutism.
The men replying are almost never showing support, they’re minimizing the issue, or they’re trying to co-opt the thread.
It doesn’t need to be a uniquely woman’s issue for it to be a predominantly women’s issue.
And it doesn’t need to be a predominantly woman’s issue for women to want to talk about it from a woman’s perspective without men making it about them.The men replying are almost never showing support, they’re minimizing the issue, or they’re trying to co-opt the thread.
To me, the comment in question didn’t seem to be doing that. The point I’m trying to make is to object to the idea that it is categorically doing that, given the context. It seems like a divisive way of deciding what is bad behavior, to condemn any statement made in response to discussion about problems faced by one group that is not specifically about the struggles of that group, regardless of anything else about the statement.
This is a specific complaint about how any time women try to talk about women’s issues in a forum that may contain men, those men engage in disingenuous whataboutism.
If you would rather expand on how that goes or the ways in which this is predominantly a women’s issue, feel free to take this opportunity instead of responding to what else I’m saying.
Even now, you’re trying to derail the conversation, which is about how women have to deal with this bullshit all the time online, and make it about a topic you care about.
You don’t need to participate, if this isn’t the subject that you want to talk about.
I agree that it’s not quite the same, and I’m finding it real interesting to ponder how that happens.
This comic and this comment section have been pretty thought provoking. (Heads up, this is overly abstract speculation from here): For example, here’s a mathsy diagram
This is a commutative diagram, and I’m not at the level of being able to explain it properly, but part of it is the idea of equivalence, the fact that there’s two routes from A to D that are equivalent.I’m thinking about this sort of analogous to what we’re seeing in the comic and these comments. Like, the base experiences we’re talking about (being spoken over when you’re trying to share your experiences, for example) are fundamentally shared experiences, but the manner of experiencing them is different, because it’s coloured by our own positionality (of which gender is a big part of). I think sometimes though, it’s like discussions don’t work because we get separated — some of us at B, and some at C. Like, it does matter that our experiences are different, but also, there’s a sense in which it doesn’t, because we need to head to the same place anyway.
I don’t know what converging on D would be in this analogy. Solidarity perhaps? Which would, I suppose, involve recognising that the route you’re on is different to the route other people are on, and that it’s possible to be heading to the same place. I’m not sure, this is quite abstract, but you said the word “meta” and that seemed to catalyse this thought, so here’s this comment. You’re welcome/my apologies
Oh hell yeah, Category Theory! LET’S GOOOOO!
You’re right, and we all know who downvoted you
Comic: “I’m here to talk about women.” Heckling ensues
First Comment: “This is exactly what happens to men.” Wall of Upvotes
Proof that you can pull the users out of the Reddit but you can’t pull the Reddit out of the users.
I’d actually disagree with you.
I don’t think the Comic is specifically about women.
I think this is about the overarching problem of whataboutism and its consequences on society and societal discourse.
In which case the OP would be on-topic and you would be the one derailing.
I am not saying that either of you is trying to derail but rather just showing that different interpretations (a more literal interpretation on your side and a more symbolic on ours) can lead to different discussions.
For me, while I get where the post is coming from, a lot of the narrative seems to revolve around the dynamic of:
“We need to have an open dialog about XYZ. Let’s have a conversation.”
“Okay, then here’s ABC for context, as a comparison to XYZ.”
“Actually I’m here to talk about XYZ, not ABC. And you’re the problem for not strictly limiting this open conversation to the specific scope I want to consider.”
Like… you can either ask for open discussion or you can say, “Everybody shut up and listen to what I have to say, and unless you’re opening your mouth to completely agree with me in every way, don’t bother because I’m not here for anything other than letting you all know what I think.”
I’m not saying that the points are wrong or bad, just that it’s a bad look to start out with talking about an interest in having a dialogue, then as soon as there’s any expansion of the scope of discussion, suddenly being unhappy that there’s thoughts different from where it started out, and playing the victim or worse, blaming whoever took the invitation for an open dialogue at face value and engaged in good faith.
I feel like that’s a pretty gross misrepresentation of the issue.
The people in the comic (and in the comments here) are often trying to minimize the issue on which she is speaking, or co-opt the conversation for their own issues (typically forcing her and the original issue to the sidelines). They’re not adding context or having a discussion in good faith.
Like… you can either ask for open discussion or you can say, “Everybody shut up and listen to what I have to say, and unless you’re opening your mouth to completely agree with me in every way
There’s a big middle area you’re ignoring.
My point is that it is a universal issue, all while many people are trying very hard to represent it as women-specific.
When male voices are shushed both under their posts and under those focused on women, they don’t have much of a platform to speak out. And they need it, too.
If all sides have an opportunity to say things without being interrupted, there is no point in chiming in and saying the other side has it worse.
As much as you may be right that both men and women are experiencing this, the post was talking about how women experience it. And when women speak out about it, it’s apparently hard to talk about just that and instead the male experience has to be discussed as well.
Again, I really don’t think you intended anything bad here. But as you said:
If all sides have an opportunity to say things without being interrupted, there is no point in chiming in and saying the other side has it worse.
Women try to talk about it (e.g. via this topic), but you interrupted by chiming in how men are also affected. That might well be true, but it’s also the kind of interruption that can be frustrating because, and I say this as a man, the experience women have is probably different (on average) from the experience men have.
You’re not one of the voices in the comic shouting “misandrist” or anything, but it is a kind of “and what about the men?” type of statement. And I don’t think you’re trying to be dismissive here at all and I do believe your intentions are good, but the result here is that what women want to talk about is once again not talked about, which is what the comic is about.
Your well-intentioned statement I think perhaps unbeknownst to you is steering the discussion away from the intended topic. And it’s exactly that problem that this comic addresses.
I see where you’re coming from, and I agree for the most part (and I also don’t agree with people taking pitchforks on you), but the direction I take to “steer it away” is to look at it as something universal, which is simply more helpful to understand why it happens, not to tie attention to men’s issues specifically.
I believe we’ve come at the point where women and men issues are so intertwined, so much permeating each other that it’s no longer helpful to see them as separate issues to begin with. Sure, we have different experiences, but those very experiences come from the interaction of problems on both sides, and looking at them from one side is essentially screaming into the void and hoping it helps - and when it predictably doesn’t, this leads to people vilifying each other instead of exploring the reasons behind it.
Everyone has to familiarize themselves with the issues other sides face, and come from the side of compassion if they want to be part of an actual solution. That includes men, women and enbies, too.
the direction I take to “steer it away” is to look at it as something universal, which is simply more helpful to understand why it happens, not to tie attention to men’s issues specifically.
I understand your intentions, but it doesn’t have the intended effect. By doing this you are making the assumption that the way women experience these issues is (close to) the same as the way men experience it. But you can’t really assume that, and often people disagree.
When women want to talk about problems they face, it’s important to hear them out and address their issue, instead of what amounts to ‘deflecting’ to a “grander” issue. At its core it’s a whataboutism that derails the conversation, and that’s not what you intended.
So my genuine advice is: don’t. Address these problems one by one. The solutions can often be different.
You have to assume that
I believe we’ve come at the point where women and men issues are so intertwined, so much permeating each other that it’s no longer helpful to see them as separate issues to begin with.
may well not be correct, and it can feel incredibly invalidating to people by assuming that this is the case.
I tried to make it clear that women have a drastically different social experience. It is true, and it would be weird to debate it.
But we have to separate venting from finding solutions. My very point is that we often cannot practically address women’s issues without addressing men’s ones, and vice versa. Going one by one, you will quickly hit the wall, as men (or women, if we talk about men’s issues) just won’t be able to do what they’re asked for. And instead of accepting that and working together, people tend to assume that the reason the other side doesn’t change is because they act in bad faith. This is inherently imbalanced and unworkable.
I see, but the point of the comic is that women don’t seem to agree with you and find that way of thinking about it fairly exasperating at times. In many cases there hasn’t been a serious attempt to address the issues raised, so claiming that you can’t address them without also addressing men’s issues would be perhaps a bit premature.
As much as you may be right that both men and women are experiencing this, the post was talking about how women experience it
Right, but if I made a post about how “Men poop,” and women came in to say “women poop too,” it would make complete sense. Maybe we should be talking about how everybody poops and everyone’s poop stinks at that, instead of “women’s poop stinks, no men’s poop stinks!”
We’re not talking about basic biological functions here. We’re talking about issues that men and women may experience differently. This example is apples to oranges.
Except it isn’t though. Take cases like the last thread I can recall on lemmy that could have inspired this comic, the french protesting against that one guy who had people come rape his wife. The front facing image of that post was a woman holding a sign that says “not all men but always a man.” What this sign should have said is “rape is bad,” instead it pretended the two women who raped me don’t exist and that I’m guilty by association of my genitals instead of a victim like them for going through the same thing they did. What’s more, I’m told to shut up and let women speak at best, usually with one or two “well you must’ve liked it,” or “what’re you, gay?s” thrown in for good measure, yet the second you say a woman must’ve liked it or what is she a lesbian you’re still the problem, can’t beat em, can’t join em. Even better, nobody says “shut up and let men speak,” we say “stop generalizing us as abusers for having penises,” and that is met with “shut up and let women speak.”
I’m sorry that you’re unable to parse metaphors, but everybody poops.
toby keith guest appearance
Look, my cis white male cultural heritage is colonialism and centering my experience
After this election I agree. We are toxic animals that should be killing ourselves.
Usually it’s a case of a well thought out decent post, but then you scroll down to comments and it’s “men are trash” and etc, so you end up with a bunch of fighting, which detracts from the original point.
Prolly would be better if “comments on this are disabled” was more common practice.
Or if administrative systems actually punished people heavily for saying stuff like “(any group of people) are trash”
If the comments are threaded (like they are here), I don’t get why any point can be considered to derail conversations. That’s just one branch. If you don’t care to discuss that branch, just scroll past or minimize it and find another branch or start your own. They can all be discussed in parallel.
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I love when I’m explaining a struggle of mine that is cause of who I am and then being enrolled in the oppression Olympics.
It’s almost like assholes can’t keep their mouths shut when people don’t talk about their needs. If only society created less of those, that’d be nice.
Yeah well imagine what its like being a non-binary half black half Mexican person with disabilities. Ugh I’m so tired of privileged people like you whining about how no one will listen.
Woah, woah.
I wanna say that’s never happened to me when I was talking about my experiences. But … I can’t.
I feel ya
If you wanna talk feel free to DM me.
Why does everything have to be so us-vs.-them? We all share the same planet.
This is potentially gender construct and sexism getting directly in the way of advocacy against real issues. Women start a protest advocating against a very real issue they face, by women for women, and it is spun as a direct attack on men. Same thing happens for men’s advocacy.
“…For the Master’s tool will never dismantle the master’s house. They may allow us temporarily to beat him at his own game, but they will never enable us to bring about genuine change. And this fact is only threatening to those women who still define the master’s house as their only source of support…” - Audre Large, in “Master’s Tools Will Never Take Down the Master’s House”
I don’t think most would blame many women for the practices they do in public to stay safe, despite the behavior explicitly being sexist. This is because we understand that in absence of these kinds of behaviors, women do actually get prayed upon, most often by men. It’s the reality of a dangerous world. however, we get angry when the statements and phrases used to justify these behaviors are said aloud.
What we fail to acknowledge is that that same kind of victimization is possible to a guy. Most guys would find the idea of deliberately using the bathroom at the same time as their friend as weird, possibly even girly. Machismo stereotypes and trying to conform to manliness actively makes men more vulnerable .
We also downplay women being violent, yet again a gender stereotype which not only lets women get physical in public, but actually also makes women easier to dismiss when they’re angry and yelling. This not only lets women get away with toxic behavior, but robs them of being taken seriously at other times.
These are both issues caused by gender, which is also actively defining how advocacy happens and creates an arbitrary divide.
I liked this comment. You wrote with the nuance and balance that I strive for. Thanks for sharing
Outrage is the new thing. Many people aren’t happy or able to feel like their life is affirmed without being angry with someone or at something and it’s vital to their ideology to impose their values on others.
Non compliance with their demands is non optional.
Is outrage all that new? It strikes me as evergreen
Because humans like to make up categories which naturally cause inequality of some kind. I don’t want this but it’s the way it is and to pretend otherwise is ignorant and silly.
Many of these problems while not strictly zero sum are pretty close to it.
I would like my own planet.
Isn’t that what Mormons promise lol
Yes and no. It was.
Oh niiice. Do they have any customer reviews?
Yes: stay away and do not join. Seek real progress and learning outside of avoidance, superstition, and bias.
Sincerely,
an adult on an ongoing journey to deconstruct different traumas from being raised in said high-demand cult.
(Also, I can confirm the promise of a planet was canon, and infinitely more than just a single planet. But they recently decided to downplay that part of the doctrine, and some members now deny that there was ever a promise of achieving godhood. The cult always has a justification, and most members are more than satisfied with mental gymnastics.)
But do they have DRM?
Sometimes certain subsets of the planet have problems particular to their region, culture, or cohort.
Telling a person wandering through the desert “I also get thirsty” maybe deflects from the issue at hand.
Telling a person wandering through the desert “I also get thirsty” maybe deflects from the issue at hand.
Or… That may be a show of support, in sharing of a common burden, a message of, “You are not alone in this struggle.”
Rather than always seeing it as a negative, maybe allow for the possibility that it’s coming from a different place.
Honestly, I feel like this whole sentiment of, “Don’t attempt to bring any context into a conversation. Only stick strictly to what one person has decided to talk about.” is not only counterproductive in that moment, but also in the medium and long term has a marked effect in shutting down future conversations about difficult and uncomfortable topics.
I mean, how many times does a person get into a conversation that starts with, “Can we talk about X?” or “Let’s have an open, honest discussion about Y?”…only to add something to that conversation and be told, “No, you’re wrong for bringing that up. We’re only talking about X and why it’s the worst thing ever.”… before they get to the point where the next time someone says, “Can we talk about Z?” they just say, “No, sorry. Not interested.”?
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Um, yes. This might happen a lot less if these issues that need to be talked about aren’t all blamed on guys. But still yes; we constantly hear about women’s problems in various media all the time, while men are usually stuck having to use some comment section to talk about their problem.
We have groups like [email protected] available for talking about men’s issues. The problem is that these groups often attract users who explicitly want to blame the issues faced by men, mostly or entirely on women. This derails the conversation similarly, and robs men of the autonomy to improve their situation, since if women are entirely to blame then there is little men can do to help themselves than pressure women to change (a bad solution). Plenty of users there try to shut that kind of toxicity down there, luckily. That does not stop that kind of interaction, though.
Think about the similar history of the Incel movement being hijacked by misogynists.
There are issues which both genders cause for each other, but there many more issues which every gender causes for themselves as well. It is best that we all own those issues we cause at the same time that we find solutions (for both internal and external issues) which don’t cause issues for others. Otherwise we’ll just continue in a war of the sexes.
Hey wait … I’m in a comment section now!
I have never seen this happen. I am sure it happens. Perhaps we can leave these toxic people behind. Regardless of gender, color, …
I’ve seen it happen in both directions. I’ve seen more of it being the opposite as in the meme, but I’m a man so am more likely to see those instances. My female friends have had the opposite experience, probably for the same reason
