Lemmy is a worse platform for women than Reddit was EDIT this link is an OLD POST that contains my thesis on the state of lemmy and is not the context of the much more recent comment in the screenshot. sorry for any confusion caused by this juxtaposition, my main goal with having this linked is to expose how nothing has improved
Hello, thanks for your reply, I appreciate that we can have a civil conversation about a topic that can be quite heated. I’m a man, so I definitely can’t speak for women, but I try my best to listen, and I can try to pass on what I’ve learned!
You’re totally right that nobody in the screenshot wrote the words “men are owed sex by women”, but if you’ll give me the benefit of the doubt, I think there’s something a little deeper at play here, and I think it really depends on your perspective.
Rather than explain it directly, it might be easier to use an example - let’s say that you have a friend who you don’t want to have sex with. If that friend is really nice to you, and you don’t have sex with them, are you punishing them?
If that friend said something like, “You know, if you don’t have sex with us, we might become more violent and dangerous…” how do you think that would make you feel?
Personally, I would feel a bit scared by that sort of statement - I feel that it’s coercive, and it has a kind of veiled threat of violence there that makes me uncomfortable.
I hope that helps explain why some people might read the message differently from how you read it.
But this is about instructing women to withhold sex from men as a means to achieve their societal goals.
This does not make sense because It is counterproductive to punish people who already agree with your point of view.
Why do you feel like a lack of sex is a punishment? Isn’t a lack of sex the baseline? If I don’t buy my friend a gift, that’s not a punishment, that is a neutral action. Unless the implied assumption was that I owe it to them to give them gifts.
Thanks again for the reply - I think I understand your point, which I think is genuinely interesting and worthy of discussion, but there is just something about the phrasing that feels off to me, and just to be clear, I’m sure it’s unintentional. I’m sure we can both agree that we would always want to make everyone feel safe, respected and valued, but sometimes we can accidentally say (or write) things in a way that come across in a way that we don’t intend.
In my opinion, talking about women ‘withholding’ sex as a ‘punishment’ implies a certain level of expectation or entitlement, like men are entitled to have sex with women and if they don’t have sex then they’re punishing men. This is something that I think a lot of us sort of struggle to recognise as harmful, because we all are human and we know that we all have a need for sex, both men and women - but historically, this kind of framing, that men are entitled to sex with women. has been used to excuse violent sexual crimes
There’s totally a valid conversation to be had about how effective this movement could be, but I think that it’s really important that men like myself need to start from a place of recognising that our behaviour can be really hurtful to women, even when we don’t intend it to be, and that we listen to them when they tell us that we can make really simple small changes to protect their humanity, make them feel safe and valued, and recognise the part that we all play - consciously and unconsciously - in the system that has mistreated women for longer than we can possibly fathom.
No they are not entitled. But the poster specifically instructs people to withhold sex. Even if the woman wants to have sex. This could make sense if the woman was having sex with someone who opposes the ownership of their bodies. But if the man already holds their point of view, what is the point? For who are they not having sex? What is being achieved?
Again, I totally get your point, and I think it’s a worthwhile conversation to have, but that’s not really what I’m here to talk about - I’m just trying to explain what happened in the comment thread, why people got upset, and how we can avoid that so that we can have open and productive conversations about these really sensitive topics without upsetting people.
The reality is that women so often have to deal with men trying to control their sexuality, so when we’re talking about these topics in good faith, we really need to be extra cautious that we’re handling these topics delicately and respectfully.
Sure thing. But that is not what OP was insinuating with his original argument.
I’m not sure I really understand who you’re referring to when you write “OP”, but either way, I think that that with the additional context I explained above, the comment reply of “women do not exist for you to have sex” is quite understandable - I personally don’t feel that it is fair to describe it as a non-sequitur.
Honestly, I find it kind of weird that the top level comment (as written by Lightor) is more about how the movement would affect him, and I think that it probably demonstrates that he isn’t really the ally he seems to think he is. In my opinion, if he really was “one of the good guys”, he wouldn’t have written his comment the way he did.
Anyways, I think I’ve said all I have to say - thanks again for the respectful conversation, and I hope you have a great day, much love and solidarity!