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 
Admittedly, while I was one of those in the OG thread pointing the possible danger out (and seeing it at gross at the time- in hindsight an understatement)- I feel there is also a much broader social stigma against perceived “cheaters” from most parts of society, even amongst women. There were some she/hers saying essentially the same shit in the thread (along the lines of “cheaters get what they deserve,” etc).
I don’t agree with it, of course- but the sort of “‘cheaters’ get what they deserve” mentality is very, very common. There’s no shortage of women “getting back at” not just the cheaters- but those they cheated with as well- actually it’s rather stereotypical and common for many to go after the “homewreckers” even if they didn’t know anything. Women can absolutely be misogynist as well, after all. And having a vengeful streak (or schadenfreude at others’) is definitely not just a thing for dudes or even straights, admittedly I think that’s just a natural human instinct (one perhaps shared with most complex organisms?)- that can be put to good use or humor, but also and far more often than not is put to bad.
Rambling here but- in hindsight it really was incel shit- at the time and in the thread I mentioned it gave me a bad taste and tried to discourage it, but I didn’t then see it as such till people really started pointing it out days after the fact. I do think it is just that societally common (and am very glad that Hexbear is taking a principled stand against it), a form of normalized inceldom (well, something that predates the term “incel” for sure). A stand had to and has to be taken against it, but I think it’s something that also needs to be (and will be a reoccuring process as new people come in) hammered into peoples heads, the understanding of the consequences, of other people’s possible circumstances, of empathy, etc. In some ways I’m not even sure if I agree with permabanning (though don’t care overly much- if they wish they can always make a new account and better themselves) some of those posters, but they certainly could not be allowed to spew that shit.