Hi comrades, want to give you all an informal update on the discussions around the site’s misogyny problems that’ve been happening over the last several days. I wanna make sure you know that the admin/mod team has seen all of that discourse and we’ve been actively discussing solutions in the matrix mod chat. We’re taking this shit very seriously and acknowledge that we haven’t used a heavy enough hand on misogynistic rhetoric. As some of you saw we nuked that cheating thread from a couple weeks ago and handed out temp bans to the most egregious offenders. Idk how that was allowed to run it’s course but we apologize for that oversight. We’re going to do better.
We’ve come up with some ideas for how to improve this part of the site culture and we want to get suggestions from y’all as well, since the alarm was sounded on this by our beautiful c/traa posters to begin with. Our ideas so far include:
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A zero-tolerance policy towards any even remotely misogynistic/patriarchal posts or comments, as too much has slipped through the cracks on that, establishing a clear protocol for bans for violating rules against misogyny, and ideally tracking repeat offenders in a way that makes deciding a course of action easy when they reoffend.
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Uphold TC69 thought by starting up a book club (and hopefully more to follow) on feminist theory and encouraging mass participation, particularly from the he/him’s on the site. “The Will to Change” by bell hooks has been suggested by multiple people as a great starting point but please feel free to suggest any other works.
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Relaunching /c/menby with a trusted educated mod team and a specific focus on countering mainstream narratives about masculinity, relationships and sex that breed reactionary, patriarchal attitudes
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Encouraging [namely femme] participation in /c/womenby and taking steps to revitalize that sub as an excellent source of discussion on feminism and intersectionality
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Holding another mod drive to get more folks into mod positions in our communities who can help weed out reactionary attitudes
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Encouraging users to use the report button often on any post that seems even remotely sus, with the promise that no one’s going to be punished for “report abuse” for reporting posts in obvious good faith
Please let me know your thoughts on the above or any other ideas you have for making the site better, safer and more inclusive for our femme comrades. Once we’ve fully hammered out plans and updated policy we plan to make an announcement post highlighting these changes for the whole userbase. Thank you all for being here and being who you are 
This is really appreciated; thanks to the mods, and also to all the people having struggle sessions and putting in real life force (energy, time, wellbeing, etc.) into educating their comrades, I see you, appreciate you and commend your effort o7
One thing does stand out to me as potentially worrying, but I do want to hear what others think as well.
I guess I assumed that /c/womenby does already include all enbies and not just “femme enbies”, so then does the creation of /c/menby require an exodus of “masc enbies” to a different comm? Why are we doing gender segregation for enbies?
Now as far as enbies go I’m pretty femme I suppose, so I kinda don’t think this will be such a big problem for me since I can also identify with the label of “woman” easily enough, but what about our they/thems and agender comrades? “Engage in whichever community you like or both” is one way to go about it I suppose, but I can’t help but feel like we’re replicating the gender binary here in a way that will make some feel excluded from both comms.
I’m all for having a more active place to unpack gender shit, I think that is sorely needed for our cis he/him comrades, but I guess my instinct would be to go to something like /c/men or /c/mascs (these are not prescriptive :P) and leave the enbies alone? What do others think?
Thank you for saying this sneak, I present femme but I don’t see myself as any gender (I’m agender). I wouldn’t be posting in womenby because I don’t see myself as a woman, and I found it questionable having that plus menby it felt a bit strange seeing that split like that and back to the binary imo which I feel excludes me, I don’t think enbies should be in the gender box but that’s me. But I’ll continue to post in the trans mega as is the norm
No I hear you. When I first joined the site I did clinically think “Are the women and enbies grouped together because there are no women on this site and we’re trying to fill out the ranks?” but I try to engage with it in good faith (as you have to if you’re to engage with anything in hellworld)
anyways I always appreciate your posts in trans mega <3
Why not have a masc/femme com instead? And maybe a separate enby com for every enby? I can understand some of the logic but speaking for myself I have a real problem with binary boxes… I also always engage with good faith here and I do try see the logic behind all posts.
As I’ve appreciated yours, you should post more btw ^^
Yeah this makes sense to me at least.
Aww thanks, I appreciate you saying that. I’ve been pretty burnt out/depressed and just kinda reverted to doing a lot of unhealthy coping irl, as well as lurking & avoiding trans mega on hexbear. Good news is I think I’m somewhat on the mend, so hopefully I’ll do some more posting soon.
Burn out can be tough, I hope you come through that soon and feel a little weight lifted at least. Looking forward to seeing you post when you’re feeling better
Femme refers to a type of lesbian but is now also being used by some to describe non-lesbian gender. Personally I’d rather not take a term already used by lesbians.
I do think names that aren’t part of the binary are the way to go those were just off the top of my head going off presentation but something more fiiting would be good.
had no idea femme and fem were not the same word
“Femme” has a long history in the trans community too, particularly “en femme,” being used historically by part-timers when they wished to specify their expression for a given situation. E.G. “I went to the store en femme the other day.”
But I do agree that in this specific scenario on hexbear, that “fem” with that spelling makes more sense.
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I’d add that enby shpuld be explicitly allowed in any of these spaces since enby can include people who sometimes touch on the binary
Well as I’ve already stated I’m an agender non binary person and I agrree that people present however they wish. I present femme but I’m not a woman. I’m not calling for segregation I was speaking as someone who sits outside the binary. My suggestion was based on presentation and moving away from the descriptor for non binary people. I agree that the spaces should be for everyone but as I sit outside the binary I feel it excludes me in it’s current naming scheme.
Womenby and menby were created in the beginning of the site four years ago and I’m not sure what the reasoning was. Womenby was reopened a few months ago so there would be a place for feminist discussion while also allowing anything that would have been allowed before it was locked as well. To be honest, any name is going to have issues. zoomerleninist and I will work on a better sidebar in the next few days.
Posting in the trans mega must continue unabated
Always
I think cis people should be put in the Gender Box
Why would it “require” an exodus or do gender segragation? It’s not as if anybody is running a secret database of the AGAB of neopronoun users on hexbear and bans them for posting in the wrong com (not to mention that pronouns aren’t surefire indicators of gender). I know a lot of transmasc enbies who get massive dysphoria from being lumped in with fem people, being treated as “women light” etc. A lot of transmasc nonbinary people are very close in gender identity and presentation to men, if they do not downright use a label like “nonbinary trans man” for themselves, not to mention that their lived experience is usually much more marked by struggles with toxic norms of masculinity than with (trans)misogyny. Over here in Germany, whether transmascs even want to be included in the FLINTA acronym (women, lesbians, nonbinary, trans, inter and agender) is a recurring point of debate in trans spaces because the label in practice is often used as a more inclusive form of saying “women only”.
ofc individual attitudes to this can vary a lot. A lot of the transmac nonbinary people i know are staunch feminists, but that doesn’t necessarily mean they feel at ease in a “no men allowed” space. I think it’s a good thing when they have the option to discuss masculinity with other transmascs and cis men, and i think many of them have valuable perspectives that cis men could benefit from.
lol, not sure why I framed it that way, some kind of latent
coming to the surface. I guess I was thinking more about a new user experience. If the plans in this post do go ahead tho, and the c/womenby and c/menby comms become more active, I’m sure seasoned enby and agender users will experience similar feelings.
yeah this is why I find the current grouping of women and enbies into one comm strange as well.
agree its kind of a far from ideal setup
yeah this has kinda been a problem for me my whole life tbh. i’ve spent like 15+ years in trans communities and reinventing the gender binary is something i’ve seen happen repeatedly, with enbies just kind of expected to go along with whatever is the opposite of their assigned gender. tho these comms aren’t trans exclusive they do kind of have the same effect of just recreating the gender binary, and splitting up the enby community along birth assignment lines.
i also think it misunderstands the reason to make a group for women and enbies - to be clear i think this comm in particular is fine. it’s just somewhat undermined by the existence of c/menby. given that we live in a patriarchy, women and nonbinary people have legitimate reason to organise with each other against patriarchy n misogyny. such a group for men and enbies just doesn’t make sense. we should not exactly be organising against women. and yeah, i know c/menby is not (supposed to be) anti-woman, it’s (supposed to be) for them to educate themselves. but in that context, enbies are politically aligned with women and should be actively included in the space rather than just passively jammed in.
we should keep c/womenby, change c/menby to just like
c/men(i’ve reconsidered my name recommendation, see edit) or something to that effect, if it can be maintained as a space for deconstructing patriarchy rather than generating toxic masculinity, and maybe a nonbinary space of our own.EDIT: I think the community should be called c/deconstructing_masculinity to make it harder for it to turn into a breeding ground for misogyny.
Yeah this is how I made sense of womenby as well, but then learning about the existence of menby just threw me for a loop lol
Good suggestions :)
thank you
just want to echo this – I don’t often have the bandwidth to engage, and I really appreciate everyone who puts forth that emotional and intellectual labor. ❤️ thank you very, very much.
I run an inclusive space for everyone who is not a cis man and we use the terminology “people of marginalised genders”. It’s clunky but it works. We started out with something similar to “womenby” but we got a lot of criticism for being exclusionary.
I guess I would tentatively suggest one group for all marginalised genders and a separate comm for discussion of masculinity.
Thanks, I really appreciate your input as someone with more experience in talking to gender diverse people about this.
Yeah, that can happen and then lots of reactionaries take offense at the personal inconvenience of thinking about the way they use language, but it’s a small and necessary price to pay if it means certain people feel included imo