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.
The vast majority of ppl are decent. If others can’t find them, that’s a them problem.
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.
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.
WUT ABOUT MEN?!??!?
The way this comment section unironically mirrors the comic perfectly.
So many dudes here unironically talking about how men have it hard too 🤦♂️
It’s kinda pathetic lol. How is it so hard for people to understand that maybe the best time to talk about problems affecting you is not when someone else is talking about problems affecting them?
Okay, I’ll just say it.
Everyone has it rough right now. Mostly because we’ve been thoroughly railroaded by corporations for most of our lives, but still.
Everything sucks.
I’m just going to speak my mind as a Closeted transwoman who would looks like a guy
I didn’t honestly want to get involved with this thread at all in fear of creating an absolute mess
But being trans myself I see myself having empathy for both woman’s and men’s rights because I know and understand the issues men are facing and see the issues woman are facing
I don’t like seeing the devide on either side and absolutely hate seeing the division and fighting especially when people advocate for men’s rights or woman’s rights
I personally advocate for both because I see everyone having rights as part of equality and equity and if you don’t want any one group to have rights then that isn’t equality or equity
We should be free to talk about both men’s rights and woman’s rights without being attacked for it
Someone downvoted you which is lame. All you’ve advocated for is that both groups have their issues be respected in public discourse.
Because like the comic is pointing out as the issue and that OP has just done that exact thing - steering the conversation of topic away from the focus.
In a discussion about women by a woman, it sounds crazy but maybe they want the focus to be on women. That doesn’t mean men issues don’t matter or don’t exist. There are an infinite number of venues to discuss it that are not in a thread regarding women issues.
Is this thread really about women’s rights though?
It’s more of a meta thread about the issue the comic brings up, it’s about how some men switch the topic around. If the comic was intended to focus entirely on women’s rights it would end at the first image
And it’s fine to talk about enby issues in any discussion, because enbies are the most oppressed gender demographic.
Yea, that happens online. It rarely happens irl with regular folk. It’s really quite obvious when you actually interact with the outside world regularly. I’ve found that many ppl do empathize with most ppl’s problems. More often than what online comics imply.
WRT the first panel, I feel that way too.
That said, is this ragebait?
Yeah, but no
There are assholes on both sides, like it or not.
Yes, there are loads of men who don’t deserve the name, that put women down, who can only be happy on the back of women. Fuck them
Having said that, I very much remember that video of guys going to a support group for men that committed uicide with feminists waiting for them outside to yell things like “it’s good that he killed himself!”. Fuck those assholes too.
Can we maybe ALL be nice to EVERYONE?
I’m sorry, but this comic doesn’t help. The reality is that both men and women face the same nonsense when they bring up what they have to contend with so how about we don’t try to disparage either side? Listen to both sides? You know, the thing we should be always doing?
I’m sorry, but this comic doesn’t help.
I don’t think it necessarily has to? Like, I agree with pretty much everything in your comment, aside from this part and what it implies. I read this comment as an expression of frustration from the artist, and it’s certainly one that I can relate to. I also realise that there’s a heckton of men who’ll relate too, because of how men who want to carve out space to talk about men’s issues can be cut off, even if they’re not the same men as the assholes who only want to talk about men’s issues when they’re speaking over a woman. However, I think that saying “both sides” to this misses the point of the comic
It can be useful to ground statements in our own personal perspectives because of how it limits the scope of what we’re saying. A smaller, messier example is that I am autistic and have done both disability activism and autism activism in the past. I am autistic and because of that, I am also disabled, and so many of my experiences as an autistic person can also apply more generally to disabled people. However, generalising a statement can be difficult, especially if on a difficult topic, such as institutional ableism. I was able to speak confidently on how that affected me personally, and to a more limited degree, how it affects other autistic people, because of who I am in community with. However, I don’t directly know any deaf people, for example, and thus I am cautious when talking about my experiences as a disabled person, lest I over-generalise. I get a similar sense from the comic’s use of “as a woman”. Grounding stuff in that way is often an attempt to limit the scope of the discussion to something more manageable when grappling with something hard to articulate.
I also do think it’s useful to recognise the difference in experience. As a silly example, I might say “as a woman, I need to breathe air in order to survive”. I could also say “as a human, I need to breathe air in order to survive”. I could also say “as an animal, I need to breathe air in order to survive”, but actually, I’d need to go and double check the facts on that last one. That’s sort of my point — sometimes statements are overly specific and should be simplified, like in the “as a [woman/human]” statements. However, limiting the scope (like in the “as a human” statement compared to the “as an animal” one) actually gives space for the possibility that some weird animals don’t need to breathe.
Apologies if I have explained this poorly. I don’t mean to come off as lecturing or argumentative; I am replying to your comment because I appreciate your points and I am open to discussion.
Responding directly to the person in the comic
I hear you when you say that as a woman, you feel societal expectations of you can be harsh and contradictory.
There isn’t a way for me to experience the same things that you experience, but I can try to empathise with your experiences by comparing them with my own, and noting times when I have felt the same way. This means that I have to compare my experiences with yours. It isn’t done from a place of contest, but from trying to relate.
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.
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.
You’re right, and we all know who downvoted you
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.
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
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.
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.
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.
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.
Woah, woah.
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
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.”?
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 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.
People are reenacting the point of the comic in real time, it’s wild.
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.
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 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.
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.
