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:
-
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.
-
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.
-
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
-
Encouraging [namely femme] participation in /c/womenby and taking steps to revitalize that sub as an excellent source of discussion on feminism and intersectionality
-
Holding another mod drive to get more folks into mod positions in our communities who can help weed out reactionary attitudes
-
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 
I'd like to kick off a little discussion since this comment about the way Hexbear often assumes the reason women aren't having more children is that material conditions for them are poor, when it actually is the opposite from @Othello@hexbear.net has stuck with me and it's a really important discussion that wasn't really properly addressed/developed in that thread (in fact, many commenters just kinda dismissed the point love made with the exact kinda rote vulgar materialism Othello was arguing against in the first place!)
Maybe it deserves its own thread, maybe the admins/mods should take a look at what happened there, IDK.
Goodness I feel flattered. I dont even think I explained myself as well as i could have i was so pissed off from seeing another post or comment hand-wringing about population rates in rich industrialized countries for the umpteenth time. this was actully why i felt the need to take a break from hexbear. and i mean im glad i did ive been touching grass more then ever before and am pissed off over internet things far less (still way too often). actually, i would not have seen this comment so quickly if not notified by my friends. anyway thanks for all the love in this thread yall, very sweet, i shall be off though as the edibles are kicking in and i need to lay down immediately.
I hope you find the direction Hexbear is going in to be better now. Enjoy the edibles!
id do! and i shall!
Welcome back!
My wife's dad is one of 18 kids. That's unthinkable. My dad is one of like 8 kids, also a unimaginable number of kids. Both were basically in farm country. The conditions under which they had those kids were wildly different then the conditions we live in now. My wife has a degree, her grandmothers didn't, my wife's mom is a veteran and the primary breadwinner in the house, also not true of her mother or mother-in-law. They didn't have those opportunities.
How is someone supposed to achieve any of that if they are literally pregnant for almost 15 fucking years straight? At the time that they were having kids women had only just gained the right to have a fucking bank account. Oral birth control was only just becoming available in 1960. So much of a womens life was under direct control of their husbands. No fault divorce wasn't a thing until 1969. 1970 Reed v Reed ended will discrimination. My youngest uncle was born around the time that women could finally get lines of credit (1974), meaning up until then they couldn't legally get a mortgage. I could go on, or you can just look at the timeline of rights: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Timeline_of_women%27s_legal_rights_in_the_United_States_(other_than_voting)
It's so painfully obvious that it was the lack of independence within the social system that lead to "high birth rates" and that when given the opportunity to do anything other then pump out kids, women chose to not pump out kids.
The entire line of attack on women from the right is centered around reversing the rights they have gained. The goal of that line of attack is to get the birth rate to rise again. Abortion rights is the beachhead, no fault divorce is being whispered about by some right wing psychos. If it was money that made the birthrate go up then that's how they would solve it. The fact that these rights are under siege is evidence that they believe this will make birthrates to up. They've said as much as well. It's not theory or speculation.
Yeah the position a lot of people have on here with regards to birthrates, the position that Othello was calling out, where people think that if you improve "material conditions" more women will start having children, is just not compatible with reality.
In reality, the poorest countries with the worst education have the highest birthrates, while the wealthiest countries with good education have the lowest birthrates. I've also gotten into this in previous comments as well. As materialists, our positions should be based in reality and not vibes, and the reality is very clear on this.
"Improve material conditions" might just be a Marxist Thought Terminating Cliché. It really absolves you of the investigation required for proper analysis.
Two days late to this take but I'm actually inclined to agree with it bc 9/10 times someone simply saying 'improve material conditions' never follows that up with what conditions they intend to improve, any kind of idea or starter for a plan to execute, or how their hypothetical improvements would change the conditions they observe. Like, we talk about Marxism being a science a lot but a lot of novices talk about it without really following the Scientific Method.
Yes this is my feeling as well. It's like Mao said: No investigation, No right to speak.
That might be a bit harsh in tone, but if you're saying we need to "improve material conditions" you should be able to back that up with details. If you can't, you need to do more research.
Also, material conditions are NOT strictly economic conditions. They are all conditions that shape your actions and desires. Laws and their application, and how those laws impact social groups are part of the Material Conditions under which we live. Social Norms, which are an outgrowth of laws, which can persist after a law is repealed or changed, are also part of Material Conditions.
As an example: After the October Revolution, incredibly broad and loose divorce laws were implemented, and the results of that was a stark rise in divorce. Prior to that it was almost impossible for a women in Russia to leave an abusive or undesired marriage.
This change in the law resulted in a huge change in women's material conditions within Russia. Allowing for more autonomy and freedom to pursue relationships on their own terms.
Maybe I'm just a walking incendiary by nature (don't laugh!) but frankly, I don't consider that harsh in the slightest-- if anything that's just the fact of the matter; and I'd expect at the very least an exposition kin to what you've written about the divorce law reforms post-October Revolution out of anyone seriously looking to deploy the material conditions cliché. There's a dogmatism in not doing so, I think; and makes that particular comrade's implementation of Marxism little more than religion at least from where I sit.
I fully agree. Avoiding dogmatism should be a high priority for all comrades. I have a strong habit of doing even basic research before making a comment on a topic I'm not fully versed in. In doing so I sometimes find things I didn't expect to find, which is actually kind of exciting. I derive a lot of good feelings from checking my assertions at the door. I don't mind scrapping a comment because I discovered my assertions were not based in reality. Posting is reactionary if you do so with full confidence and an empty head. There are a lot of "truths" we take for granted and we need to avoid that at all costs. If I'm waxing philosophical I try to make sure that's clear.
Part of this comes from having the ability to recognize ones own limitations. I know where the gaps in my knowledge reside and I want to avoid those gaps becoming reactionary points of view.
This is a very good point and something I've been guilty of myself. I'll do better in the future.
I think declining birthrate ( without doing some malthusian eugenics shit) isn't necessarily a bad thing long term.
Not only that, its inevitable, even if there wasnt climate change, world population would decrease long term.
Financial situations aside, i dont think my wife and I would have ever planned for more than 2 kids. I dont know when we will financially even start having kids, but what is the point in having more then 2?
but it's always some coded-malthsian stuff. like with effected altruists, or melon tusk equivalents who uh believe they need to 'replenish' their countries gene pool
I could as well say that malthusianism is always a dogwhistle for reactionaries who want to reduce everybody with a uterus to a walking incubator. It is true a lot of the time, e.g. NazBols are really into disguising their anti-abortion stance as being "anti-malthusian", but i wouldn't call you a nazbol for making that argument. Just somebody who needs to be made aware that low birth rates in reality mean people have the choice to not have kids, or to start a family later in life. The DDR had excellent child care on a level we do not see as a widespread thing in any capitalist nation, it had excellent public schools, affordable housing, it had women that were a lot more materially independent than most western working class women, according to the typical analysis of the stereotypical hexbear dude people there should have had a ton of kids. But in reality, the DDR had a lower birth rate than west Germany because the DDR also had better access to abortion, way less social stigma around that and no society that constantly lorded a christofascist ideal of motherhood over women to pressure them into becoming a stay at home mom. Declining birth rates are a good thing, because high birth rates mean that something is going really, really wrong in regards to reproductive rights. That doesn't change that there are ecofascist "humanity is cancer" nihilists out there, but please be aware that this entire discourse is extremely online bs that has very little to do with actual family planning in the real world where people actually need to care for their babies for the next two decades. When your plan for raising 3+ children isn't being a petit-bourgeois absentee breadwinner dad or being able to afford staff that does all your chores for you, you have to be really, really into taking care of kids, to a degree most people just aren't.
Good points, definitely need to touch grass. My major is biology so I feel like I get it more often in subtle ways.
I remember a conversation I had with a friend who'd been getting really into Hardcore History and wanted to talk some cool ass history with me, the history minor
We got on the topic of how the aztecs had instituted a sort of doctrinal loophole saying that women who died in childbirth also got to go to the Valhalla-equivalent that was normally for men who died in combat. I laughed and said "well yeah, I can imagine plenty of women didn't want to risk their fucking lives by having kids back then, makes sense that there would be a lot of reluctance towards childbirth that they'd try to address with a little media campaign."
This friend got really upset with me and claimed that I was projecting modern attitudes (woke wasn't really a big term yet) onto the past. I wanted to smoke his weed so I didn't start an argument but the patriarchy detector was beeping like crazy
Lol what an ignorant and truly reactionary way to respond there. Societies coming up with mythologies to construct and justify forms of gendered control is like, feminist history 101. Any critical analysis of what all the fuzz over fertility goddesses was about, or why nature is characterized as feminine and nurturing is also projecting modern attitudes to the past, I assume.
I hadn't even read a single bit of feminist texts back then but maintaining a lens of "people have always wanted to live comfortably without fucking dying unnecessarily" was a pretty reliable way to be at least 75 percent correct in my assumptions
I don't think people, but especially men, realize what a terrifying ordeal childbirth was in the past.
I remember reading an AskHistorians thread ages ago on contemporary documents written by women facing or having gone through childbirth and it was pretty chilling stuff
What lack of materialism does to your brain
MUCH LOVE TO OTHELLO
MUCH LOVE TO OTHELLO
in addition to all the truly excellent posting, Othello gave me a kick-ass eyeliner tip that I treasure ❤️
goodness, I am so flattered, i think you are super cool as well! im thrilled you enjoyed my eyeliner tip so much, its the only way i do it nowadays!
MUCH LOVE TO OTHELLO
thank you
thank you i love you.
honestly i love love/loves pronouns, it makes everything sound scottish to me
... This wasn't widely understood here?? Even Reddit of all places knows this
I can easily see myself falling into "well obviously it's because shit sucks" trap so I appreciate the bump on the noggin
Yeah I mean I suppose the idea is that a meaningful number of people would just always want to have kids, and the thing that's holding them back is affording them. Of course that's a very antimaterialistic understanding that is mostly justified by looking at preindustrial societies without critically accounting for the structural incentive to have children help in farm work, women having no rights, and other factors.
Moreover I think it's a good reminder to always question our assumptions. When we talk about "material conditions" it too often just means "the vibes I associate with this context" since it fails to take far too many relevant factors into account.
So proud to have Othello as my friend.
right back at you my beloved friend!
all timer post, didn't get enough attention.
A c/bestofhexbear submission imo superb post.
I think it's mostly that, but a bit of the other- a lot of people actually want to have 1 or 2 kids and literally can't because they can't afford it, or can't even socialize or date in the first place because they cant afford it. But yeah people don't come into money and prosperity and decide to have 12 children.
Or when they do, I imagine it's with a surrogate...
GOOD POST, thanks for the share