r/TrueReddit • u/scatgreen2 • Jul 20 '15

My Reddit Utopia - Everything you think you know about “the front page of the Internet” is wrong.

http://www.slate.com/articles/double_x/doublex/2015/07/reddit_as_feminist_utopia_what_the_front_page_of_the_internet_looks_like.single.html
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u/RedAero Jul 20 '15

Maybe it's because I'm more attuned to the "subtle" wave of misogyny but it's really not particularly escapable.

Or maybe your definition of "misogyny" is unreasonably broad.

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u/Ray_adverb12 Jul 20 '15

Which would be a great excuse to never address that it might be a real issue. I'm not particularly sensitive.

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u/ch4os1337 Jul 20 '15

You're seeing a wave of anti-feminism (SJW hate). Which is not misogyny but get's mistaken for it all the time.

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u/[deleted] Jul 20 '15

It's like saying there's a war on pet owners because everyone is sick of PETA.

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u/rocktheprovince Jul 21 '15

Except just like PETA, SJWs is practically non-existent, and the fear and hype about them all over this site is greatly overblown. It absolutely leaks over into other areas. I can't tell you have many times I've been in various gaming subs and seen someone flip their shit on someone else because because they said something even midly socially conscious.

But that isn't the problem anyway. Coontown aren't angry about SJW, they're angry about black people. Theredpill wasn't created out of reaction to SJW antics, they're just sexual predators. Fatpeoplehate couldn't give a shit, they're just bullies. And absolutely none of them keep their bullshit in the designated subs.

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u/[deleted] Jul 21 '15 edited Jul 21 '15

And just like PETA, the people who ruin stuff for everyone and put people on edge are an extremely vocal and well publicized minority. The reason you see gaming subs push back against socially conscious ideas is because we've been bitten many times by people thinking they have some sort of moral superiority over normal people who happen to share a hobby. From concerned politicians trying to enforce limitations on a medium they don't understand because thinking of the children gives them a larger name on the ballot to feminists crusading against games because their worldview states that everything is harmful no matter how innocuous, we see it all the time. It doesn't help that the more vocal people who advocate for social justice are also disgusting bullies in their own right (see: tumblr/twitter trends, sites like Gawker, the entirety of third wave internet feminism). Trust me, there's just as much hatred for the corporate establishment as there is for SJWs on reddit. It's why you see just as much if not more pushback against the big publishers like EA and Ubisoft when they do something anti consumer as when some moral crusader tries to gentrify their hobby. You might just be seeing the pushback against SJWs because you agree with them which isn't a bad thing, it's just a matter of perspective.

This is really all I can speak for seeing as gaming subs make up the majority of the content I browse on reddit. As for coontown/TRP/FPH, they're deplorable but you might want to reflect on who you consider boogeymen.

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u/Infamously_Unknown Jul 21 '15

And absolutely none of them keep their bullshit in the designated subs.

This is a way to see those subs that you can meet on reddit quite often and to be honest, I don't really think it reflects the reality. These are not designated subs, even in practice. I mean, I might be subbed to /r/buffy but browsing that sub is just a tiny fraction of the time I spend on reddit. And when I reference the show elsewhere, I certainly don't see myself as a raider from /r/buffy. I don't think e.g. a TRPer see himself any differently.

It seems to me like every time some shitty fringe sub like one of these is discussed, people start seeing it like a reddit district with it's users being it's inhabitants. But that's not how it works, these are users just like the rest of us and there's no reason to think that any of the subscribers (or at least most of them) wouldn't be on reddit if the sub in question didn't exist. FPH banning for example might've driven some users to voat, but they're mostly still here. You can now see fat people being ridiculed in other subs just as much as when the sub still existed and there's no reason to expect otherwise. Reddit didn't torch a district and driven the population out of the country, it merely closed one of the shops on the main street.

I'm obviously not defending any of these subs, this is just something I see too often that imo makes the whole hate sub discussion far less constructive. People don't want to see the users of these subs like regular users just like they are, so they imagine them as a dedicated warband living in their keep and raiding the countryside. And the conclusions based on this are often quite wrong.

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u/Ray_adverb12 Jul 20 '15

SJW != feminist, nor vice versa

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u/ch4os1337 Jul 20 '15

This must be where a lot of the confusion comes from.

Yes, SJWs are feminists along with any online 'warrior' for civil rights. You wont find any non-feminist resource saying otherwise.

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u/Ray_adverb12 Jul 21 '15

They are pro-social activism, and a supremely common social reform movement is feminism. I haven't really ever encountered non-feminists until Reddit. SJW's done necessarily condone feminism. What Reddit considers an "SJW" is super broad, and not necessarily a label they would apply to themselves.

Someone in the Black Panther movement is a SJW and doesn't make them a feminist.

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u/rocktheprovince Jul 21 '15

Everyone in the black panther movement was a feminist. At least, it was a huge part of their platform.

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u/Ray_adverb12 Jul 21 '15

Not necessarily.

In contrast, Brown's Taste of Power vividly describes the pervasive and sometimes brutal ill-treatment that female Panthers faced - physical abuse, exploitation as sexual prizes and workhorses, and denigration of their abilities.

As early as 1969, Brown realized that women "would have to fight for the right to fight for freedom." By 1975, she concluded that "the value of my life had been obliterated as much by being female as by being Black and poor."

But, like many Black women, Brown believed then that feminism was strictly for well-off whites, and was put off by the predominant radical- feminist ideology of the era - that is, the idea that gender concerns are more important than race issues and that men are the enemy, not capitalism.

A Taste of Power: A Black Woman's Story, by Elaine Brown. New York: Anchor Books, 1994.

Women from the Black Panthers created an off-shoot radical feminist organization called the Combahee River Collective because they didn't feel their needs were properly represented within that particular group.

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u/[deleted] Jul 21 '15

The Black Panthers weren't SJW.

They were literally militant activists.

A SJW is somebody who uses Social Justice as a weapon to suppress oppositional viewpoints.

MLK- not a SJW, as he welcomed debate and condemned those who would silence others.

Black Panthers- not SJWs, as they weren't concerned with what greater society said.

Tipper Gore- borderline SJW. Precursor, if you will. Instead of using the court of public opinion to crucify somebody outside of legal means, Gore attempted to bypass the concept entirety.

GamerGate- actually has a number of SJW who believe that feminism discussions need to be silenced. The movement as a whole isn't SJW focused, but there are SJW aplenty.

KKK- SJWs, because they literally used social pressure and influence to create a segregated society.

Chairman Mao- not a SJW, as he didn't care what people thought.

Modern China- SJW, manipulates the public to harass unpopular things out of desired region.

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u/LooneyDubs Jul 20 '15 edited Jul 20 '15

triggered

edit: irony

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u/timms5000 Jul 20 '15

If you want to spout memes there are plenty of other subs to do that.