Forgive me if this was addressed, but I don’t think it was. During a previous struggle session in a statement from the mod team something was said along the lines of “the he/hims aren’t beating the allegations”.
Personally I do not think this is acceptable, to me this is just using “he/hims” as a proxy for saying men. No one in IRL settings uses “he/hims” as a term to describe people who use him/him pronouns, no one is categorized into a grouping in general based on their pronouns as it is just a preferred pronoun not a characteristic like gender identity.
If there is misogyny going on, just say there is misogyny among users, their pronouns do not change the content of what they said, if someone with he/him pronouns and someone with she/her pronouns typed the exact same degrading thing about a woman, their pronouns would not factor into whether what they said was misogynistic or not.
I am bringing this up as it seems like people in the mod chat are still using “he/hims” to refer to people who have indicated they prefer he/him as their pronouns, you might think this is progressive because you are not directly making a gender identity assumption, but I believe this is in fact reactionary and you are just using pronouns as a proxy for the gender that is most commonly associated with the given pronoun i.e. men in the case of saying “he/hims”.
I think this is at least counterproductive and at most harmful, if knowing someone’s gender identity is relevant or useful, it should just be asked for.
The point of having pronouns is to accommodate and to treat people with respect and dignity about what they prefer to be called. Using pronouns as a proxy for gender identity undermines this as, treating someone with dignity would involve asking them directly what their gender identity is, not making judgments or assumptions based off of their preferred pronouns.
The only thing that having he/him pronouns indicates is that the person prefers to be referred to with the pronouns he and him. They are just personal pronouns, they are not equivalent to an ethnicity, a gender identity, a gender expression, etc.
If someone with he/him pronouns seems like they are misogynistic, that may have something to do with their gender identity, but it has nothing to do with their pronouns. It is not fair nor accurate to make assumptions of gender identity from pronouns and I think this should be avoided.
This is not to undermine any concerns about misogyny, but misogyny can and should be fought against regardless of what pronouns are involved in any instance of it.
Thanks for reading this, please know all I want is for pronouns and gender identity not to be conflated and to create a safe and respectful space for all users. And I think a good way to work towards this would be to stop using “he/hims”, “she/hers”, “they/thems”, etc. as a way to refer to people who specify they would like to be referred to as those pronouns.
You don’t think cis men, as members of an oppressing social class, should be viewed with more default suspicion? I certainly think white people should be. The brainworms go deep, both the white supremacist ones and the misogynistic ones. That conditioning doesn’t vanish the moment you join a communist website.
As others have said in this thread, we’re at risk of doing “not all men” but for he/hims. It’s reality that most cis men are more misogynistic than average, and, if you believe the site polls, most he/him users on hexbear identify as cis men. Unsurprisingly, there’s a real, noticeable correlation between he/him pronouns and misogyny here.
I don’t think we’re at the point where we need to worry about oppression of cis men, or white people, on hexbear.
In the real world or on here? Considering the fact I have no way of knowing wether people are cis, their race, their class position or really anything else about them, then I assume you mean IRL. Yeah there I do look more suspiciously at people who are more likely to benefit from structures of oppression, when I am engaging in political work or trying to create a cultural or social space inclusive of all people.
And we solve that by doing “black capitalism” but for whomever the mods like today?
I don’t either, which is why I didn’t say that.
I mean here too. As I said, most users with he/him pronouns identify as cis men.
But amab enbies like you and I are not exempt from scrutiny either. We were not only raised as men but we also identify with manhood to some degree, and we live in a patriarchal society where we are told from birth that that makes us superior to women and anyone else who is more femme than us. We are inundated with this message, from every movie and advertisement, from every street corner, from our own friends and family, right out of the cradle. “Femme is weak and stupid and inferior, masc is strong and intelligent and superior.” That shit worms its way in.
You said this:
And now you’ve also compared criticizing men as a group to endorsing black capitalism.
I’m sure you have some nuance behind that thought, but one of your rhetorical angles throughout this thread has been to complain that mods and users are less suspicious of you when you use they/them pronouns, as if that’s not statistically justified, as if that doesn’t reflect the patriarchal world we all live in, and that angle bothers me.
Unfortunately I have to handle something IRL so I can’t continue this right now, but I really think you are pushing too hard and not reflecting on what people are saying, maybe you are in argument mode and you are trying to defend yourself, but please think about this topic very carefully.
As I said I have no way of knowing wether someone is cis or not and your statement that “most users” identify as that isn’t suddenly gonna give me that power.
Nobody is exempt from scrutiny, what is this statement even? Out of pocket statements should be treated like what they are no matter if you feel safe around the gender identity of the poster.
Okay then we should also treat trans women the same way. What an odd way of engaging with the world. Either that or you’re just doing misgendering with extra steps.
Thank you for explaining patriarchy to me, I had no idea.
“statistically justified” lmao what the fuck are you going on about.
No that’s not at all what I’m doing lmao. What a wild reading. I’m not even gonna engage with this.
Eat me. Worst that can happen is I get banned, not really some great tragedy.
9/10 out of ten this will get deleted for hostility lol.
You don’t think hostility is a problem? You don’t think it has ripple effects on community health?
People remember that hostility. The next time they come back to the site, they’re more on guard, more defensive, more likely to be hostile themselves. It becomes a vicious cycle that slowly kills the community.
Yeah I do think hostility is a problem, which is why I am critical of the mods and their behaviour. This will get removed for hostility but other users will be allowed to say much worse things, which is the entire reason people are pissed about the “he/hims” thing to begin with.
In one sentence: Most he/him users are cis men, so it’s reasonable to treat them with more suspicion by default. Is that really so confusing?
It’s not about knowing whether a specific person is cis or not. It’s about the general trend that, because most he/him users are cis men, they are more likely to say misogynistic things.
If you ignore the “identifying with masculinity” part of what I said.
But also, women and femmes can be misogynistic. They just tend to be less misogynistic than men. All along, I’ve been speaking in terms of tendencies and probabilities, not absolutes, for a reason.
Is it statistically justified to view white people with suspicion?
Fuck, I feel so mad when people talk to me like this. The level of disrespect just gets under my skin.
Disengage