this post was submitted on 30 Dec 2024
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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.

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[–] Drewfro66@lemmygrad.ml 50 points 2 months ago (4 children)

I would go further to say that it's just not really okay to single out a demographic in a glib way like this, even if they did say "men" instead of "he/himself".

I'm not saying it's not "politically correct". I don't care about that. I'm saying it's not healthy.

I can't count how many times I've seen the conversation play out - someone glibly insults men, or white people, or cis people, and someone (rightfully) responds to say - hey, there's trans men, queer white people, cis WoC - the response is always "okay, I'm only talking about cishet white men". This is almost as bad - it erases people's identities, because badness is assumed to be an inherent trait of the identity that they are excluded from.

There's a clear line between light-hearted fun-poking (making fun of "White people food") or actual reasoned criticism and the kind of instinctual other-ing of "he/him pronouns? Privilege detected!". Mods should be removing this sort of content and issuing warnings, not participating in it.

[–] khizuo@hexbear.net 38 points 2 months ago (1 children)

Singling out demographics is generally a way for marginalized people to discuss their experiences of marginalization. Like, how would the proletariat be able to discuss their exploitation by the bourgeois if they were not able to name the bourgeois? Likewise, how would POC be able to thoroughly discuss their oppression by white people if we can not say “white people” while doing it? It literally does not matter that some white people are queer (I’ve met some very racist queer white people lol), that does not automatically absolve racist behavior. Intersectional analysis of marginalization has been a thing in leftist circles for decades now.

[–] Parzivus@hexbear.net 17 points 2 months ago (1 children)

They addressed what you're talking about

light-hearted fun-poking (making fun of "White people food") or actual reasoned criticism and the kind of instinctual other-ing of "he/him pronouns? Privilege detected!".

No one is taking issue with effortposts

[–] khizuo@hexbear.net 27 points 2 months ago

I don’t think discussion of marginalization only occurs in effortposts. If i want to say “god white people are so annoying” that’s still a discussion of marginalization.

[–] SorosFootSoldier@hexbear.net 31 points 2 months ago (2 children)

There was a good post a few days maybe weeks back about how saying all men are inherently evil is reactionary. I wish I saved that because I'd link it.

[–] REgon@hexbear.net 16 points 2 months ago (2 children)

That viewpoint and those like it are tolerated if not celebrated by subsets of the userbase. @Self_Hating_Moid@hexbear.net was a user who constantly posted incredibly reactionary shit, calling for actual genocide and the like, but it was cool because it was about white people. And I need to stress it was unironic.

I also think some users struggle with reading, because I will say things like "some users say these things unironically and that's bad" and then I will have to have 10 discussions about how joking about it is fine.

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[–] REgon@hexbear.net 21 points 2 months ago* (last edited 2 months ago)

This was the "apology" from that mod btw its since been deleted, but someone archived it first lol. Good thing too, since they haven't changed their opinion, they just can't stand by it.

Also anecdotally my experience got much more pleasant when my gender identity changed. I was treated with much less hostility here after I stopped being a "he/him". There's so many users here who are massive shitheads, but they think they're doing good because they're "leftists". In those users mind, if you disagree with them, then you're reactionary. No reason to ever do self crit.

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[–] Tomboymoder@hexbear.net 45 points 2 months ago (4 children)

The pup/pup’s are not beating the allegations doggirl-sweat

[–] SchillMenaker@hexbear.net 38 points 2 months ago

But they are biting the allegations

[–] Hermes@hexbear.net 34 points 2 months ago (2 children)

Bureaucrat remains in our hearts

[–] Yukiko@hexbear.net 31 points 2 months ago

They're demanding walkies and not caring who they have to bark at to get them.

[–] aaaaaaadjsf@hexbear.net 33 points 2 months ago* (last edited 2 months ago) (22 children)

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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[–] SorosFootSoldier@hexbear.net 31 points 2 months ago* (last edited 2 months ago) (6 children)

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".

[–] Midnight_Pearl@hexbear.net 36 points 2 months ago (2 children)

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"

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[–] kristina@hexbear.net 35 points 2 months ago* (last edited 2 months ago) (17 children)

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 neuron-activation , 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

[–] Blakey@hexbear.net 22 points 2 months ago

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.

[–] SchillMenaker@hexbear.net 18 points 2 months ago (4 children)

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.

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[–] combat_doomerism@hexbear.net 16 points 2 months ago* (last edited 2 months ago) (2 children)

he/him whiningis 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?

[–] kristina@hexbear.net 26 points 2 months ago* (last edited 2 months ago) (2 children)

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.

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[–] khizuo@hexbear.net 21 points 2 months ago* (last edited 2 months ago) (1 children)

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.

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[–] REgon@hexbear.net 29 points 2 months ago* (last edited 2 months ago)

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 ~~feds~~ children who have social influence for the first time in their lives.

[–] AssortedBiscuits@hexbear.net 28 points 2 months ago (3 children)

Why do I get a feeling that within a few days, there's going to be more bans related to this struggle session?

[–] REgon@hexbear.net 17 points 2 months ago

It's been good, I was gonna go for another run tomorrow anyway

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[–] TC_209@hexbear.net 23 points 2 months ago (1 children)

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.

[–] khizuo@hexbear.net 40 points 2 months ago (3 children)

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.

[–] ChestRockwell@hexbear.net 16 points 2 months ago (1 children)

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.

[–] khizuo@hexbear.net 23 points 2 months ago* (last edited 2 months ago) (2 children)

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.

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[–] kristina@hexbear.net 20 points 2 months ago (2 children)
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