You may find benefit in discussing it with other non binary people.

I’ve been thinking about it and honestly it would make me feel too much like a liar. And I don’t think I would be able to bring myself to do it, even if I decided right now that it’s what I’m going to do. I actually feel kinda shitty even for just asking that question, it feels wrong for multiple reasons. So I’m sorry for laying that question on you.

You’ve given me a lot to rethink here though. I definitely need to do a bit of homework regarding alt right tactics, in order to know the enemy better. I’m bad at homework and following directions and tend to just wing it but this is important and if I’m going to be involving myself in these conflicts, I’d better be armed appropriately.

Thank you very much for this awesome conversation. I’ve honestly been looking forward to your replies because you seem to get exactly what I’m talking about and your solutions make 100% sense to me. I hope to see you around here often, people like you make me feel a little less like running away from this place. Hope you have a great morning / day / night / whatever the time is where you are.

she/her/they/them

Just want to say, seeing this can be helpful and encouraging to people who are questioning and scared of saying or doing the wrong things. At least it was for me. There was a particular person I was following on social media that described herself as a ‘transfem enby’, who was probably the most instrumental in making me come to terms with myself, who listed all four of these pronouns. And seeing all of those pronouns made me think, “Oh, so the rules aren’t so black and white and this isn’t actually so scary and intimidating after all. I am valid in how I feel, even if I’m actually fine with any pronouns.”

Of course, I’ve now seen ‘any’ listed as pronouns many times but when you’re not in these circles yet, you’re ignorant and go by what you see in media representation etc. Concepts that seem obvious to me now would’ve been beyond me before.

Oof. There goes that theory then lol. And yeah, I did originally get the impression based on my first couple of proper interactions here that it was an older crowd. Although honestly, it’s extremely hard to tell over text based communication. I think that often on these anonymous platforms, users just sort of assume that the person they’re speaking to is in a similar demographic to them. Because you can’t really detect age through a sentence or paragraph unless the person specifically brings up MS-DOS days or something. Our brains do a lot of filling in the gaps for us and that isn’t always reliable.

I’d actually be interested to see some sort of census or poll here that can reveal these things. Although I half expect that a lot of users here would be like “Don’t do the poll! They’re trying to track you and harvest your data for evil! - sent from my iPhone”.

Omg, I can just imagine and I’m glad that I wasn’t here. Probably wouldn’t have been able to keep my mouth shut and would probably be banned from a bunch of places by now. Especially world communities, I get the impression those moderators would’ve been very busy making sure no men’s feelings were hurt.

It makes me think that there’s a lot more teens and early 20 somethings on this platform than I thought. Because on Reddit, the majority of the “man or bear” stuff that I saw was through screenshots in feminist subs. And I got the impression that the people who were freaking out the most about it were teenagers and grown men that can’t think for themselves who treat the words of people like Rogan as gospel. And I don’t see too many Rogan fans around here.

Honestly, now that I think about it, that would make sense and explain a couple of little annoyances I’ve had here on this platform.

Also Redditors: “Hmmm I wonder why no women’s spaces are thriving on Lemmy.”

I like the sentiment of this post but let’s not forget that the buff, cool fedi users also seemingly downvoted women-oriented communities out of existence here. Not even WitchesvsPatriarchy survived. And let’s not forget that the reason downvotes are disabled on Blåhaj is because the buff, cool fedi users just couldn’t help themselves with downvote brigading there too.

I’m saying this as a simple user that just wants a platform to exist on, I don’t think most people give a shit who owns or is running the platform as long as it seems like a place where they’ll have a good time. Users make the platform, not anything else. So when people are shopping around for their next social media space, they’re looking more at what the users are posting and doing than the infrastructure or CEO.

To this day I haven’t tried Discord beyond a single conversation I was having with someone I met on Reddit at one point. But maybe women feel more at home there and maybe there’s more cool stuff for random users to look at there right now. And it’s probably just that simple.

Technical specifications aren’t going to be winning more users. Content is.

Oh yeah it’s definitely TV. But this was before the days of Netflix and shit and before I had uncapped wifi. I don’t watch standard TV anymore either and when I do see it, same reaction as you. It’s probably a bit different from country to country but I think standard TV is mostly geared towards older people now too because most under 40 have unplugged by now.

Or maybe I’m really wrong

Nah, I think you might be on to something with the third option and it’s something to keep in mind. In fact I might even need to copy and paste your comment to remind myself about it because I think sometimes my anger gets the better of me in these situations.

But it can be so fucking hard to keep the anger at the bay. Just last night, discussing the fact that a poll in Germany showed that 26% of young men support the nu nazi party versus 11% of women, I had someone say to me “oh but women believe in horoscopes, so they’re just as bad.” How do you not flip your shit when coming across that kind of ‘logic’?

And this brings me to another thing, seeing as this place is supposed to be all left wing and shit. There are a lot of supposed left wing people that will speak in the exact same way and have all the exact same points as right wing people when it comes to this discussion about men falling for right wing grifters at over twice the rate as women (as revealed by those Germany stats and many many other stats). A lot of supposed left wing people that will clutch their pearls and cry “sexist!” at the slightest suggestion that 26% of men versus 11% of women means that there’s a problem that needs to be addressed.

So it actually feels a little bit like being stuck between a rock and hard place. It’s not in my nature to just hold my tongue when I can see there’s something wrong but I kinda wish it was because trying to have a constructive conversation about this anywhere other than in specific Reddit subs where you’re preaching to the choir feels like banging your head against the wall.

So unfortunately, it seems to me that it’s not just right wing men that need toddler reasoning in order to convince them but left wing men too. Remember there’s a reason that twoxchromosomes and any other large women’s spaces on Reddit have never been able to take off here on Lemmy. Not even WitchesvsPatriarchy survived this place. And that reason is downvote brigading. The same reason why LGBTQ+ communities need an instance with downvotes disabled. This is why I said earlier that I think women in leadership are the future. At least as far as progressive politics go. Because even progressive men seem to be further behind than women.

I hope you don’t mind if I ask your advice about something. I was going to post this in the non-binary community but it feels safer to do this here. I identify as non-binary / genderqueer but am amab. But I’ve been thinking of doing some shape shifting in these conversations and referring to myself as a man. I feel like it would be a lot more effective to have a ‘man’ saying these things rather than keeping it neutral and vague like I have been. Although this idea makes me feel like a liar too. What do you think?

Lol yeah they seem like decent cars actually. But I made myself a promise back then to never give them a cent and I tend to stick to my principles (or at least like to think I do). It’s just a personal thing though. And also kinda funny, I think.

To this day, I will never ever ever touch any Mazda products. All thanks to their dumb fucking zoom zoom advertising campaign about 20 years ago that involved their adverts playing twice during every ad break. Plus they were sponsoring shit, so it was everywhere. I feel like I still have PTSD from it. Fuck Mazda.

Idk I see the people on here acting like the left has no room for straight white cis men, and it frustrates me because I know that a lot of them feel abandoned and rejected, but also we can’t just prioritize them like the right does because we’re asking them to join the rest of us as equals.

This particularly pisses me off, personally. As a white South African that grew up learning about how fucking terrible white people were (and sometimes still are) throughout school, and who didn’t turn into a racist nazi misogynist because of it, these people are full of shit. And weak. And probably not actually good people to begin with if other races and genders being represented or focused on once in a while is such an awful, alienating thing that makes them feel abandoned and rejected.

I’m not sure how to really feel about spoilt brat, first world kiddies that have had everything handed to them and who get 90% of representation in media turning into right wing assholes because video games aren’t giving them as much wanking material anymore. Or because gasp politicians tried to focus on actual marginalized and oppressed groups without giving white men participation trophies too. Poor babies, how awful for them.

To me it’s selfishness. They’re welcome in the left wing. But it’s not a club where we wear stupid red hats, ignore science and objective reality and tell each other how superior we are to everyone else. They had the opportunity to do something right for their mothers and their sisters and their daughters but they didn’t because that would mean doing something good for someone else instead of just whining about how hard life is because Lara Croft’s boobs aren’t big enough. So I’m not sure if they even really want to be left wing.

And yeah I can’t imagine how pissed off people would get if women started saying “not enough men” about good behavior

Yup. And this is why I struggle to see a solution. Because we somehow have to simultaneously guide them or whatever because they’re so sad and fatherless and lost, while also not ever actually mentioning what they’re doing wrong in the first place or else you’re a misandrist feminazi. We’re supposed to tackle the ‘loneliness epidemic’, but tell them that they’re lonely because they listen to Andrew Tate and treat women like shit and once again, you’re a misandrist feminazi. Because they don’t want to actually fix their problems, they just want everyone to tell them there is no problem.

I don’t know. I think my post maybe got more angry and hopeless as it went on because I got a notification of someone calling me a sexist while I was in the middle of typing this. Lol. I wish I knew the solution but feel like I’m trying to reason with toddlers.

As people.

Couldn’t agree more. Problem is that as well as selling the idea of the overaggro epic hero, they’re also selling the idea that Men™, particularly those that happened to be born with a certain skin pigment, are under attack by the woke gay agenda.

And a lot of these people easily fell for it, allowed themselves to fall for it. Because some culture war bullshit perpetuated by talentless dickheads on YouTube and Twitter was enough to convince them that gay black trans women are running rampant kidnapping children and secretly brainwashing everyone by use of female superheroes and the occasional indie game that doesn’t treat women like sex objects. So convincing these people that they should just be people is a tall task.

Personally, after more or less a lifetime of dealing with aggressive / ignorant / abusive / authoritarian (or combinations thereof) manly men, my faith in this kind change happening on a large enough scale is pretty low. I actually thought that we had made slow but steady progress since the '90s, but then the next up and coming generation tuned into Joe Rogan and Jordan Peterson and Andrew Tate. Obviously without much persuasion from their older brothers and fathers to look for better role models.

The only hope I have now, is that all of this madness currently happening leads to a massive swing in the opposite direction with more and more people waking up. Honestly, from what I can see, I think women will (and should) be leading the large on progressive views in the future. Because gen z (and probably alpha) male people have actually seemingly done the opposite of progress.

And I’m really sorry for a fifth paragraph. I’m getting a bit carried away because I’ve missed this sort of conversation from Reddit. But to go back to the issue of older brothers and fathers not guiding their children and siblings. I think “not all men” needs to be twisted into “not enough men” because not enough of this silent so called majority have done anything along the way to stop this state of affairs that we’re in now.

The way I see it, they’re literally trying to affirm their genders. They’re insecure about if they’re really men or not, so they have to go by ‘alpha male’ so that everyone knows that they’re not just regular males but the full roast brand. Men+. It’s their version of a pronouns pin.

They also occasionally partake in other forms of gender affirming care like shaving their eyelashes because eyelashes are for girls. And getting together and going “ew girls” over Captain Marvel and other good looking women in tight fitting superhero spandex, in between praising how swole Joe Rogan is looking. These are things that make them feel like manly men.

Me too

I read somewhere (but have no verification of this fact to offer) that the person in the picture isn’t even the one doing this and it’s a weird stalker / revenge situation going on here.

Imagine naming your ‘encyclopaedia’ after a political school of thought and making it crystal clear that it’s more about pushing ideology than information, then giving it the tagline “The Trustworthy Encyclopaedia”.

And the sad part is that the people this caters to will 100% believe that tagline while ignoring all other evidence to the contrary and clutching their Trump bibles and wearing their red hats.

I’m late here but whatever. I’m finding myself more and more on board with this, the more time passes. When I was younger, I would’ve been more willing to ‘debate’ every asshole but the older I’ve got, the more I’ve realised that they’ve all just got the same ‘points’ over and over again and if arguing those points hasn’t changed anything in the last 15 years, it probably won’t change anything now.

Same goes for “just asking questions”. It’s the same fucking questions that every JAQ-off asks, and all ‘questions’ that can be easily answered by shutting your fucking mouth and opening your ears for once. Maybe stepping out of your bubble and listening to what people who are different from you are saying for once.

Last night I blocked my first customer. Got a shitty, really over reacted and unnecessary comment to something. Checked their profile to see if it was just someone having a bad day and saw that literally every comment this person makes is to shit on someone, that’s their entire contribution to this platform. Even spotted a “typical white females” in there. So I just blocked, knowing that nothing of value has been lost to me.

And I think that’s how I’m gonna play it from now. If I get an aggressive response from someone that isn’t full of aggressive responses, I’ll indulge them a little. But if it’s someone that’s clearly just here to fight and make people miserable, the most attention I’ll pay them is hitting that block button.

Immediately thought of this:

“I think something’s wrong with me. I make friends, then suddenly I can’t bear to be with any of them. Seems like that other me, the cheerful and honest one, went away somewhere.”

- Kiki, from Kiki’s Delivery Service

I hope that James Gunn keeps this shit up throughout the DCU and the next few years, personally. Peacemaker also had some good hearty doses of shitting on white supremacist types, so it seems to be his thing.

I’ve also been given the “I’ve always suspected” thing (not diagnosed) from certain people, family to be specific. And while, fair enough, so have I; when I start thinking about certain treatment and button pushing that I’ve gone through, and the fact that no one ever bothered to get me professionally assessed growing up so that maybe I could’ve had a better quality life; it makes my mind start going to dark places. And I don’t like it because maybe it’s all in my head.

Edit: although to be fair, I do believe that I have become quite unintentionally good at putting a mask on throughout the years. And maybe it’s only really starting to show now that I’m older and still the way I am.

/thread