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.
The pup/pup’s are not beating the allegations
But they are biting the allegations
Bureaucrat remains in our hearts
Plutocrat when? Oligarch when? Regulator when? Apparatchik when? Need more hiveminds
They’re demanding walkies and not caring who they have to bark at to get them.
Thanks for this. I try my very best to not be a misogynist and it’s actually taken me some time to deprogram my brain from old ways of thinking. I’ve seen posters throw around the
“the he/hims aren’t beating the allegations”
bit and I know it’s not about me personally but I can’t help but feel lumped in because I identify as such. idk maybe I’m being melodramatic but like you said, if someone is being a shithead then call that person out rather than make a broad statement like “all he/hims are bad”.
I really don’t feel like rehashing the whole thing, but this just goes into ‘not all men’ territory which is shit territory to be in. The argument is just spiced up by throwing in some enbies/trans/gender diverse people into the equation that also use he/him pronouns. Its not enigmatic, we have data on how many people with he/him pronouns identify as cis or not, and unsurprisingly a vast majority of these people are cis on this site. We are all apes that rely on pattern recognition
, of course cis people with he/him pronouns will insist on shoving their brainworms up peoples noses eventually and cause some collateral damage and people will use shorthand to refer to this phenomena.Frankly, its a bit embarrassing that some users are reverting to this kind of discourse
Yeah, I always just think that either (1) this is something I don’t do so it’s not about me, (2) this is maybe something I in fact do do, so instead of getting mad about it I should look inward and try to be better, and overall (3) I occupy a privileged place in this particular dynamic so maybe instead of taking up even more rhetorical room than I do simply by being a man, I can shut up and let people that men typically silence say their piece without talking over them.
And in that spirit I’ll shut up now.
I really want to agree with you because your reasoning is nearly flawless but that’s the kind of thinking that gets me in trouble here. “Spiced up by throwing in some enbies/trans/gender diverse people” is dismissive of that population, however small, and that’s the kind of thing that this place has been trying to stamp out.
I’m genuinely not sure what the solution is either because I’m here for taking it on the chin as a cis guy but I wouldn’t want others to ever be lumped in to that.
“Spiced up by throwing in some enbies/trans/gender diverse people” is dismissive of that population
I’m not being dismissive of them, I’m saying that the people arguing the ‘not all men’ shtick are basically just using them as rhetorical shields. The vast majority of interactions on this site are from cisgender people using he/him pronouns so when people are discussing this phenomena generally that is definitely what they’re referring to
i literally feel like one of those rhetorical shields right now like you say, and it’s quite uncomfortable. i’m a queer agender person that uses he/him and i don’t feel othered at all by people using “he/hims” when they vent or call out issues of misogyny and other things like that. i honestly don’t understand it and don’t like that it’s slipping into ‘not all’ reactionary rhetoric at all.
like are we not meant to say down with cis anymore because cis people will feel othered??? i feel like you shouldn’t feel othered by those kinds of statements if you aren’t actively doing the harmful things the person was venting frustration about. i think people are just taking those kinds of statements very personally when they shouldn’t be. and i think people should really examine why it’s hitting them so personally rather than lashing out at marginalized users who are venting their frustration.
idk if that makes sense i’m really bad at articulating my thoughts…
:cat-trans:
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he/him whining
is it even possible to express that this kind of thing can hurt my feelings sometimes? I’m always terrified of saying anything about this, for fear of making this “not all men” kind of argument, but fuck it seems relevant:
hexbear is the one place I’ve felt like i can express myself, but seeing people get upvoted for generic “men are trash” comments sometimes messes with my already non-existent self-esteem. Im not trying to say people shouldnt say those kinds of things, this is my own problem, but i dont even know how to healthily express this kind of hurt is what I’m trying to say, I guess. is there a way to express this without delving into “not all men” territory?
I’m not a man and have not been seen as one by society for a looong time so I probably won’t have very useful advice for this other than ‘read mens lib shit’. Of course I had a period of time long ago where I thought I was a guy, and certain things resonated with me and do haunt me a bit still. ‘Men aren’t trusted around children.’ ‘Being a man near women can feel like you’re being seen as a predator.’ I hated being seen as a man and hated having these things implied of me, especially early on in my transition. Trans women are often seen as men that are just invading womens spaces to do men stuff, so you know, I guess I get it.
cw trauma, misogyny, sv
Transitioning and being a trans woman feels very much like being thrown to the wolves. Most trans women were never taught how to protect themselves from men and do not have support structures to help prevent that, and I have dealt with many, many situations where trans women were basically homeless for the majority of their lives due to repeated physical attacks by men. I’ve been SV’d before and was on death’s door for months afterwards, and I can’t help but think I was too naive. I felt no one ever properly taught me how to protect myself and how to seek support from others to avoid things like that. I personally am not able to go alone anywhere without being almost immediately sexually harassed. I guess I’m attractive or something, but its a never-ending onslaught. The most recent incident was a couple weeks ago, I had walked out of sight of my bf for 1 minute and some guy immediately commented on my figure. Having been SV’d and groped before, this is obviously not something that makes me feel safe. When I say I hate men, I’m referring to what is basically pervasive misogynistic terrorism (or people allying with this sort of terrorism), and it genuinely feels like every man I see is a potential adversary or someone that will overlook a real threat to me. And this is despite starting from a baseline similar to yours.
For me, I guess what I did was divorce myself from being a man, which came naturally of course. I’m not sure if its possible for an earnestly cishet normative man to do this entirely, and I’m not saying you are that. A lot of avoiding trauma is based on vibes. Women might find visibly queer men more safe to be around, some might like being around ‘softer’ men (like ones that groom themselves a lot and paint nails and so on) because that isn’t the typical kind of guy that harasses them. There’s a lot of ways to signal that you’re not a misogynistic terrorist, basically, and a lot of it has to do with rejecting mainstream masculine norms. Men can give off really bad vibes sometimes to people that are fem/fem adjacent, and the claws will come out immediately. For marginalized people online, they will notice certain tactics being regularly employed, such as semantics arguments to distract from real grievances, and then they will steer clear of those spaces.
As a disclaimer this whole tangent isn’t really fully related to the discourse in this thread, I’m more commenting on ‘not all men’ stuff.
i appreciate you sharing this, and im so sorry you had to go through all of that comrade. I think you are obviously right to protect yourself, and i dont blame you (or any others) for any “kill all men” sentiment. I dont think i was quite clear enough with this: I understand why “men are trash” arguments are made, and even agree with them. I was lucky enough that my sister ensured that much even without me having read anything lol. but feelings arent always rational, and i was just trying to express that sometimes that kind of comment can really get me down in the dumps about myself and also make me feel unwelcome on this site or that I’m making the site a worse place, and how I’m not even sure where/how to talk about that feeling. idk if that makes sense
There is the /c/menby comm
Challenging one’s privileges can be emotionally difficult, for sure, and I think that it’s okay to recognize this. I think the best way to deal with these kinds of emotions is to read theory, to listen to the experiences of marginalized people, and to talk about these feelings with comrades (who are principled about these issues.) For the record I have experienced similar emotions to what you describe, not around being a man but around other things, though I deal with these feelings very privately. I think you are already on the right track because you recognize that the problem does not lie with the people expressing the anger. While I’m not sure if a public forum is always the best platform to talk about more difficult private feelings surrounding dynamics of marginalization, I don’t think that the conversation can never be had at all. If you want to talk about this further, my DMs are open.
thank you comrade, this made me feel better, appreciate you!
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Hey, I’ve deleted my comment and I want to apologize and self-crit for engaging in tone policing especially as a non-Black POC. I do sincerely agree with your comment and I want to say I really appreciate your input throughout this thread and your observations on toxic masculinity. I think you made your point very clear in this comment and my comment was completely unnecessary and far too concerned with semantics. I am very sorry, I will not do that next time, I am really going to self-reflect on this.
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The mod that just got banned is a he/him/they/them so evidently it’s not just a cis guy thing
Non-binary people are also capable of shit thinking. The main issue with Foucalts was his refusal to back down and self-correct after rehashing right wing arguments that detract from the main issue of misogyny.
I wasn’t discussing that person in this post
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Not at all what I said
good post
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why? because you think women shouldn’t be allowed to use forceful language? stop tone policing.
joking? or should I actually reply
I don’t think you should talk like this
Is this not tone policing kristina’s words.
I don’t care about her tone, I spoke about her ideas.
this is straight up just “not all men” discourse but the word “men” has been replaced with “he/hims”
observing that a disproportionate amount of misogynistic takes come from he/hims isn’t the same as saying “literally all he/hims are bad and that includes you”
It still creates a chilling effect where he/hims feel unjustly scrutinized based on their demographic rather than their individual takes.
The arbitrators basing their policing on expected demographics and “the usual suspects” is never healthy.
this is straight up just “not all men” discourse but the word “men” has been replaced with “he/hims” [2]
the ones who aren’t peddling misogyny aren’t the ones being scrutinized, and when i say that there’s a problem with men i shouldn’t have to clarify that i don’t specifically mean every single man who exists, it should be a fucking given. all this discourse does is muddy the waters and make it harder to express that yes, this demographic is being particularly hostile to others.
why is this still a discussion on this site? holy shit
Speaking about misogyny it also took me a while to realise some users here use “misogyny/bigotry/reactionary” as a stand-in for “thing I don’t like”. I’m looking thru the tailism discussion rn and it happens there too.
bit and I know it’s not about me personally but I can’t help but feel lumped in because I identify as such. idk maybe I’m being melodramatic but like you said, if someone is being a shithead then call that person out rather than make a broad statement like “all he/hims are bad”.
I think a better way to phrase this might be, “I sometimes feel like I might be being lumped in, but I hope someone would call me out directly if I was ever being misogynistic”. I can see why other people think your comment is similar to the “not all men” discourse, but I don’t think this was your intention. No thanks needed, it’s great you are on a journey of self crit and deprogramming, that should be commended.
I see it as the discomfort of being in a space that isn’t made for me for once.
Am I a huge piece of shit? I don’t think so and I don’t think many other people would think so. Am I the all-knowing gender God? Obviously not. I’m fine, but I am often made to feel less than fine here.
Everywhere else is made for me and it’s extremely comfortable. A very small minority of places are made for not me and my responsibility is to sit in the discomfort that those places create (as long as I’m welcome there in the first place) and work out the root of that feeling.
The solution to all places being made for one demographic is not to make places that are not for that demographic, but to make the other places inclusive. How we go about doing that can be discussed, but arguing that a place being unwelcoming being a “good thing” in and of itself reminds me of black capitalist discourse.
Cities are in large part made for men, but good urban planning isn’t to shit on men. It’s to stop shitting on everyone else, which, incidentally, turns out to make cities better for men too. And funnily enough if your main goal (or even just if it is just one of your goals) is to make a place unwelcoming for a certain demographic, then you’re just going to make the place worse for all involved. Likewise with online spaces. At times you will need to make a place unwelcoming to one group (womens’ shelters for example) but you gotta be very consderate about it and consistent, neither of which are going on here.
Just wait until you work out that it’s not actually the “he/hims” engaging in a specific behaviour, and that an equal amount of users with feminine or gender neutral pronouns engage in the same behaviour. That’s when it gets really nasty, from misgendering and accusations of internalised misogyny aimed at femme users (the second of which is already happening in this thread), and up to including public messages containing death threats and violent fantasties about murdering your family made from a network of alt accounts on another instance, because whoever said such was too much of a coward to do it on their main account.
Also profiling behaviour according to pronoun tags is foolish anyway. It opens up a whole new avenue to trolls and discourages honesty. If trolls are aware that the mod team is annoyed with “he/him” users, they can just cook up some accounts with that pronoun choice and inflame the situation. On the opposite end, trolls could pick “she/her” pronouns, say some vile stuff, and hide behind that. What is said is what should be judged, not the pronoun tags of who said it. Anyone can pick any pronoun tag. Lying on the internet is easy. Anyone can claim to be anything. I don’t know who anyone on here actually is, you don’t know who I actually am. The whole point of the pronoun tags was to have openness, honestly and to engage with others from different backgrounds and walks of life. That disappears if people think that their comments are going to be judged differently by the mod team based on what tag they pick.
I’m just commenting this as a warning for new users. I’ve been here since the beginning. Don’t engage with this nonsense. Actually just leave. It’s not worth it.
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To speak to your first paragraph: I originally had he/him pronouns, but as my gender identity changed I changed my pronouns. The moment I did I noticed my interaction with users and, especially, mods got much more lenient and pleasant. This site is sort of an inverse of the outside world, which I’m sure most users consider good, but I don’t, because I don’t think oppression is solved by oppression, it’s solved by liberation - Big words for a forum, which I think is silly, but I know that’s the sort of argument that others will make.
This site is sort of an inverse of the outside world
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.
You don’t think cis men, as members of an oppressing social class, should be viewed with more default suspicion?
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.
As others have said in this thread, we’re at risk of doing “not all men” but for he/hims.
And we solve that by doing “black capitalism” but for whomever the mods like today?
I don’t think we’re at the point where we need to worry about oppression of cis men, or white people, on hexbear.
I don’t either, which is why I didn’t say that.
I assume you mean IRL
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.
I don’t think we’re at the point where we need to worry about oppression of cis men, or white people, on hexbear.
I don’t either, which is why I didn’t say that.
You said this:
I don’t think oppression is solved by oppression
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, most users with he/him pronouns identify as cis men.
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.
But amab enbies like you and I are not exempt from scrutiny either.
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.
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.
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.
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.”
Thank you for explaining patriarchy to me, I had no idea.
statistically justified
“statistically justified” lmao what the fuck are you going on about.
And now you’ve also compared criticizing men as a group to endorsing black capitalism.
No that’s not at all what I’m doing lmao. What a wild reading. I’m not even gonna engage with this.
but please think about this topic very carefully.
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.
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?
As I said I have no way of knowing wether someone is cis or not
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.
Okay then we should also treat trans women the same way.
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.
statistically justified
Is it statistically justified to view white people with suspicion?
lmao what the fuck are you going on about.
Fuck, I feel so mad when people talk to me like this. The level of disrespect just gets under my skin.
you do realise that the argument of “trans women are just cis men pretending” is exactly what terfs say? inventing “”““transface””“” to compare gender expression and blackface is absurd and honestly out of line
My point is that the dishonest cis men here are going to pretend to be trans women by adopting she/her pronoun flairs in order to not get heat from mods just like how dishonest white people pretend to be Black by putting on digital blackface. Nowhere did I say that trans women are men. Trans women are obviously women.
how do you propose to check someone for “true transness”? what qualifies are a true trans person vs someone pretending? also please stop drawing parallels between gender expression and blackface. it is really out of place
They don’t propose that should be done. Why are you arguing as if they are?
cw: transphobia
There was a group of wreckers a while ago who were trying to avoid moderation by making profiles that they thought would look like trans users. I’m not trying to imply anyone here is faking being trans, but there are people who are willing to do so in order to troll people here. Moderation based on the stated identity of an anonymous user is an avenue for wreckers to use against us.
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Which men here are doing the bad stuff?
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Y’know what, you want me to start calling out people by name, I got something for your ass, and you better never ask me to do your investigations for you ever the fuck again.
I don’t really understand the part about doing my investigations for me, you’re the one who made a declarative statement, I asked a question because I dislike vagueposting and I don’t share your experience. Thank you for providing some names so I can look into this on my own time, it’s nice to actually have something concrete to look into.
You’re also not calling people out since you’re not tagging them, but that’s me being pedantic.
If you don’t want me in your inbox, then you should block me, that’s what it’s for.Run defence
By asking a question? Lmao okay.
I have my doubts
In this thread you’ve already referred to people going by he/him/they/them as men, so I don’t know about “at this point”.
Keep playing this stupid game
The game being the one where you make a broad statement about site culture and I ask clarification to understand where you’re coming from? What’s gonna happen if I don’t do what you tell me? I’ll get banned and have to make an alt? How terrible.
I think moderation should be harsher on users who do not use “he/him” pronouns in order to discourage people who would use “he/him” lying about their pronouns to avoid punishment. I don’t know how you read my comment and interpreted it as an argument that people using “he/him” should be given leniency.
Lmao funny suggestion, it is the sort of ass-backwards solution I could see some people end at.
Why do I get a feeling that within a few days, there’s going to be more bans related to this struggle session?
It’s been good, I was gonna go for another run tomorrow anyway
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GOOD post!
Also kinda related, I’m sick of the mods using their own identity as a shield for being told they’re doing something bigoted. Every time this blows up we see the same excuse: “The mod team contains members of [minority] and they’re fine with it”. Neat! So since I’m queer does that mean I can’t be transphobic? I’m neurodivergent, guess I can’t be ableist.The site culture got so much worse after we implemented the wrecker jacketing rule.
Finally and once again to all the people who dont understand this: You not liking something does not make it “reactionary”.
Also what’s this about screenshots? New drama ig, but you’re also pointing out the last session when @ZoomeristLeninist@hexbear.net made the “he/hims” comment and then an incredible not-apology showing impressive lack of introspection, yet theres mods here acting as if you’re taking things out of context lmao.
Edit: I read the screenshots and from the context I’ve gotten the green user is incredibly patient, rehashing the same polite reflections again and again, despite being accused of outrageous shit. At some point they crack and hey wow yay they went over our arbitrary line. It’s a piss-poor bullying tactic I’ve seen used too many times here now. I had to stop reading a bit past halfway because I got too mad, so unless that pattern changes it’s bs.
It also rehashes the “he/him” argument while ignoring the main point - it’s not at all valid. It wasn’t just a bunch of “he/hims” and saying so is just a way to stop the nasty feeling of maybe having to consider that people disagreeing with you isn’t inherently bad and maybe you should look inwards. The green user is talking about noticing a pattern being valid, which it is (being scared of men is fine, we all have trauma), but that pattern isn’t applicable when you’re not talking about a bunch of men, but a bunch of people. Incredible that the mods still don’t get that saying “everyone I disagree with is a man” is a shitty thing to do.
Also calling them a debate pervert is such obvious bullshit. Modteam is full of
fedschildren who have social influence for the first time in their lives.I am a cisgendered man with a generally drab sense of style and a rather boring life, but I’m also bisexual/pansexual and, deep within me, is the soul of a raging and flamboyant queer dying to love and to be loved. I loathe the idea of being lumped in with straight, cisgendered men just because I use he/him pronouns. Oh, and if anyone wants to levy any “allegations” towards me, you had better do to publicly and with receipts; my love for my queer comrades in general – and my trans comrades specifically – burns with the heat of ten thousand suns.
I do not want to levy any allegations or challenge your care for your queer comrades. What I take issue with is the idea that only straight cis men are capable of chauvinistic behavior towards women, which is untrue. For the record I don’t believe you specifically are guilty of such behavior so this is not in any way meant as an accusation, I’m speaking in general terms. As an analogy, I live in the west, and just because I’m a queer POC doesn’t mean I’m incapable of exhibiting western chauvinism.
The CIA literally did ads to that effect “queer imposter syndrome POC” or whatever. We should always remember that more important than identity is action, and identity isn’t a substitute for theory or praxis.
This doesn’t mean that cishet comrades shouldn’t be doing selfcrit nor does it mean that those of us in the west should recognize when to defer to our comrades in the third world. There’s obviously a difference (personal identity vs position as a subject of a particular historical regime). However, essentializing any identity -cishet, queer, POC, etc. - is anti-marxist and anti-materialist.
The reasons for the predominant misogyny from cishet men isn’t something inherent to being cishet men. It’s their historical becoming in a culture that has normalized that misogyny, and their choice not to do the work to cleanly break from it.
I’m too tired to tie this back into the beating the allegations meme. If someone wants to continue the materialist thread be my guest, but I just think its important to keep some perspective about these things and remember that there are limits to identity analyses we should recognize as Marxists and materialists.
I’m not essentializing any identity. In no way am I implying that male chauvinism is inherent to men just on the basis of being men. I think theory and material analysis is incredibly important when it comes to analyzing issues surrounding identity. In fact I think that claiming that non cishet men are incapable of male chauvinism is literally anti-materialist and more essentializing than realizing that men, as a class in the current gender system of patriarchy, hold power over women as a class (patriarchy is not a class system that is inherent to anything, nor will it last forever.) The idea that material analysis cannot apply to an analysis of disability, or queerness, or any other form of marginalization is something that I wholly reject.
Oh I wasn’t suggesting you were essentializing! More pointing out that you were on the track of an important materialist approach and I was trying to tease it out for others in the thread.
I do enjoy some tasty materialism
You are absolutely correct, and I by no means intended to use my queerness as any sort of shield from criticism or critique. And, I suppose, my comment about “‘allegations’ towards me” was written in a moment of passion. What I think I’m trying to say is that I need to learn to be a better person, and having specific instances my own behavior, rather than the general behavior of cisgendered men, “under the microsope” would be more helpful. Of course, this is no one else’s responsibility, nor am I implying it should be. Am I rambling? I’m rambling.
Thank you for doing self-crit. We make more generalized observations on public forums like hexbear because we don’t all know each other very well, but I hope that in a situation where you display chauvinistic tendencies, you have good comrades around to help guide you to change that; and vice versa that you do the same for your comrades should they do the same (to let things slide for the sake of friendship is a first type of liberalism and all that.)
Foucaults got banned? Jfc and its some vague “speaking over marginalised users” but looking thru their account there’s not anything on the first page at least. So what was it?
I do think referring to people as “he/hims” is dehumanizing and weird like referring to people as “they/thems” is dehumanizing but also think gender oppressed people should be allowed to refer to their oppressors, especially in regards to misogyny.
An easier solution would be to adopt terms like “misogyny affected” and “misogyny exempted” similar to how “transmisogyny affected” (TMA) and “transmisogyny exempted” (TME) are used in discussions of privilege and bigotry in trans spaces.
Im not a trans femme though so if any trans femmes think me suggesting these terms is inappropriate, please let me know
It’s also just bullshit in the situation. It wasn’t just a bunch of “he/hims” and saying it was is a lie. It wasn’t a bunch of “he/hims” so it wasn’t even applicable, which is what got people pissed initially and now we’re at some estranged discussion because mods keep deflecting. It’s basically saying “everyone I disagree with is a man” (The user who says the “he/hims” obviously doesn’t make the distinction of pronouns and gender). It’s the thing we dunk on libs for “everyone I disagree with is a russian bot” but with leftist aesthetics.
I’m not sure I understand the significance of the difference between preferred pronouns and gender identity in this sense. Saying “he/hims” to mean “people with male gender identity” makes sense to me on the surface. Aren’t masculine pronouns for masculine people? Is it that some people use multiple sets of pronouns? Or I guess people who identify as gender fluid sometimes use he/him pronouns while not identifying as male? Not asking to contradict, just asking so I can better understand.
Edit: Thanks for taking the time to respond y’all! Makes total sense.
masc pronouns and terms can be used by people who aren’t men (e.g. I, an afab lesbian, go by “uncle crime” with my niblings, or how me and my sapphic friends call each other “bro” and “sir” and “dude” a lot) just like female pronouns and terms can be used by people who aren’t women (e.g. the way some queer men refer to each other as “girl” or “sis” or use she/her pronouns for each other)
there isn’t a direct relationship between terminology and gender identity
Here’s one way I’ve been thinking about this: Before I realized I was trans, there was a time on this site where I did use he/him pronouns but felt very uncomfortable being grouped in with men for reasons I’m now aware of, but wasn’t fully aware of then. Would it be fair to identify my past self as a “man” or would that be offensive? If someone did that now, I’d obviously feel like I was being misgendered and take offense. There are also maybe certain aspects of misogyny I might not be as attuned to yet since for most of my life I wasn’t treated as a woman typically would be. There are also trans men who use he/him pronouns and who may have been targets of misogyny due to the gender they were wrongly perceived as.
So… I realize this is complicated and maybe difficult to make sense of, but that’s kind of the point I think. Gender is complicated. People are complicated. Trying to oversimplify pronouns and gender in order to pinpoint problems can itself become problematic, and I believe this is OP’s concern if I’m reading the post correctly. I think if the issue is that there is a tendency of some cishet men on the site to either ignore or perpetuate misogyny (and I absolutely believe there is), then it seems more productive to call out the problematic behavior itself while highlighting how it may related to their status in society as cishet men, rather than to just boil it down to “he/hims” and risk unnecessarily harmful friendly fire.
I’m up way past my bedtime and need sleep, but I hope that makes sense and doesn’t come off as contrarian or something. I think this is the first time I’ve really gotten these specific thoughts and feelings out on the site since thinking about the issue, so please feel free to give constructive feedback if anything I’m saying here seems problematic.
Trying to oversimplify pronouns and gender in order to pinpoint problems can itself become problematic, and I believe this is OP’s concern if I’m reading the post correctly.
I would say this is what I was going for, I also just frankly wouldn’t want to be referred to as a “they/them” and it makes me uncomfortable that people are being referred to as something analogous to that
Additionally the argument isn’t valid at all in this situation. If it was just a bunch of “he/hims” then maybe we could have a discussion, but it wasn’t, so it’s complete bullshit. It was just an excuse to not do introspection “everyone I disagree with is a man”
I don’t think for everyone, he/him pronouns indicate being masculine or identifying as a man, I don’t think that’s a controversial thing to say. If that was the case people wouldn’t bother referring to people with he/him pronouns as “he/hims” here they would just say men. I think that what you said about people who use multiple pronouns and people who identity as gender fluid, would fit cases of someone using he/him pronouns at various points, but not* identifying as a man.
As one of the oldest users on this forum who has been active since the first week of chapo.chat, veteran of at least seven struggle sessions, and in the interest of preventing another struggle session from erupting, let me give all of you some advice here:
Like most AES countries, Hexbear is not democratic. Mods have dictatorial powers and will exercise them in the interest of keeping peace. Even if you don’t like them. Even if they are unfair at times. Even when there are questionable decisions being made. Even if it’s just a particular moderator who has an axe to grind with you.
You won’t be able to fight them. Don’t even try. Keep your heads down and learn not to cause any ruckus that might offend the mods, if you want to keep hanging out on this forum. Just let it go even if a particular grievance feels unjust. Trust me, you will have a much better time enjoying this site if you heed my advice here.
cant believe we’re getting “AES are not democratic” takes on hexbear
Non democratic in the sense that you have no control over the national policy without the central leadership having the final say. In other words, mods on Hexbear have the final say. You can complain, but you won’t be able to override their final decisions. You can vote on policies when the mods are asking for opinions, but if they don’t like how the voting goes, they can still override it. That’s what I meant.
That’s literally any non-direct democratic system though.
AES are not democratic.
Opinion discarded
Niche webforum compared to AES, mods to dictators
Deranged
Keep your head down and hope
Yeah that’s a great attitude towards site culture, really makes it welcoming. Glad to include our neurodivergent friends who have a hard time with social rules already
Yeah that works up until a point. But once you hit a certain point, it’s not worth it anymore. Why should I log in and comment on anything if there’s a high chance I’ll receive abuse and nothing will be done about it? What’s the point then?
In any online community with management that you feel is terrible, your three options are:
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Find another online community.
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Worm your way into becoming an admin and orchestrating a palace coup against the mods and admins you hate.
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Spin up a million sock puppets and compartmentalize them so that the sock puppets never interact with each other.
Everything else is a waste of time.
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Excellently said. I don’t have any major grievances with the mods, and only lightly disagree with some decisions here and there. But I recognize that some day, they’ll probably do something that I really disagree with, and it’ll be ok because this is just a silly internet forum and it’s almost impossible that the mods screw up its most important function: being a safe place for people of any identity to come and learn about lefist politics, follow the news, and commisserate. Everything else is mostly icing on the cake.
Edit: also just to add on to this because I hate to be nebulous: I’m not trying to, in some way, “escape” this struggle session and interrogate my own problems. Literally just yesterday I left a misogynistic comment because I assumed that lady who was mass-ogled in NYC had consented to it (she hadn’t, of course). I don’t know if I have a coherent take, but I recognize that marginalized users pointing out that users who use he/him are constantly being ignorant and misogynistic are correct, I’ve done it myself; yet the OP of this thread is also correct in some way, totalizing against ‘he/hims’ sands away a lot of nuance. I’m not the right guy to ask about who’s right here.
it’s true that he/him pronouns do not mean someone (like me) is a man, or cis, or a cis man, and we should speak accordingly.
That said, there is a noticeable statistical correlation between he/him users and misogyny on his site. If I had to guess why: site polls indicate that most he/him users on hexbear identify as cis men, and just as white people tend to be more racist than average, cis men tend to be more misogynistic than average.
I do think we should find the language to talk about that somehow.
It’s already difficult to talk about misogyny, here or anywhere. Just as part of white supremacy is white fragility and defensiveness, part of misogyny is male fragility and defensiveness, and it can lead to dogpiling, which can have a chilling effect. We’re not gamergate-tier but I do see subtler shades of that behavior sometimes.
I think we need to strike a balance. When someone says something like “he/hims are not beating the allegations,” we need to correct the language, but then listen to what the person is saying, make sure their effort to communicate still ultimately succeeds, without creating another barrier to talking about misogyny on this site.
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Come on now, it’s pretty comprehensible, especially for an effortpost
If you just want to be rude that’s fine, but at least give criticism if you don’t agree. Not very comradely to comment that on a post I indicated I worked on with effort.
No you just took a snippet of mod chat out of a much larger conversation we had on this and I chimed in on with my own critique.
For the record I did disagree with the use of “the he/hims” but the rest of your post is indecypherable to me.
No you just took a snippet of mod chat out of a much larger conversation we had on this and I chimed in on with my own critique.
One, this is the only context I was given, I don’t know what else I’m supposed to think. Two replying Jessie WTF is not a critique
I did disagree with the use of “the he/hims” but the rest of your post is indecypherable to me
that is a critique, an emoji going WTF is not a critique, or at least not a polite one
A quicker summary of what I was trying to say would be pronouns are not equal to gender identity and using “he/hims” as a substitute for saying men is not appropriate, as “he/hims” is not a coherent grouping and therefore people should not use that term to refer to the subset of people who use he/him pronouns acting like it indicates anything.
pronouns are not equal to gender identity
This is primarily the part I was responding to. How are pronouns not part of one’s gender identity?
I’ll use you as an example, you have they/them pronouns, you could be non binary, you could just prefer people on the internet call you they, you could be agender, bigender, genderfluid, etc. All the they/them explains is that you prefer the they and them pronouns.
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The devil on my other shoulder thinks it’s more than half likely over half the people who jump in this ring are behind vpns and based out of St. Petersburg.
smh, Putler is giving everyone pronouns 😞
i made a post about it at first but i think they’re just a 4chan troll, “soylent” in the name and look at this comment https://hexbear.net/comment/5779213 kinda disappointed thought i stumbled across a funny liberal, had to delete the post instead
This similar comment is 10 months ago - https://hexbear.net/comment/4656602
If it’s a troll they are showing committent. I tried to give the benefit of the doubt even with all the alarm bells going off.
Thank you Putin, very based
do you unironically believe “idpol” was created by russian agents and that people in warzones don’t suffer mental health issues
St. Petersburg
In this house we say Leningrad, the City to become Leningrad (if talking about prior to being named Leningrad), or the City Formerly Known as Leningrad (if talking about after being named Leningrad).
There are many things people do to make themselves “feel better about stationary running on a wheel” - being able to express their gender identity is not one of them. To me this reads that you are framing people’s right to self-expression as a coping mechanism.
If you geek out on political and philosophical matters as much as you state I would take the time here to sit down and read what our comrades have to say. There are years of posts containing resources and discussions relating to identity politics.
The first step is removing yourself of the liberal brainworms that lead you to believe a sizeable % of online posters are Russian Agents. It is not true. Trust what marginalized people have to say.I’m also concerned about your conflation of openly expressing your pronouns with privilege, that you seem to believe mental illness does not exist in a warzone (there are numerous charities dedicated to psychological trauma in Gaza for example), and that you made this post as a “gut reaction” while labelling yourself as a seeker of knowledge. These are beliefs packed full of contradictions that I suggest you take the time to unpack and try to understand why they are contradictory and what lead you to internalize them in the first place.
