I wasn’t a part of making this community, but I’ve done a little to help it grow… Here’s the rub; while I think we generally try to meme from a uniquely trans fem pov (which is awesome) there is an entire toxic form of femininity ready to latch on to this community. One only has to do a quick search on 🤮eddit to find this.
I really do love the style of memes here, but this is my plea to the mods to keep it from getting toxic. Sure, the memes can be super dark at times, but we should really keep the r/femaledaingstrategey stuff out. It’d be awesome if we can keep the comm title as mostly a joke.
This image is just a taste of what’s out there that can be toxic. Feel free to remove it, but I wanted to get a point across for all of our sakes.
Trust me, I know full well how bad things can get. I go over to 🤮eddit to pouch memes sometimes, and it saddens me how awful those places can be. It’s a pit of judgemental self hatred that lashes out at everyone just trying to live life.
I don’t want this place to become like that. I want people to have a safe space where they can be horny and show weakness. I don’t want anyone to feel ashamed of themselves for being imperfect; I want us to take pride in being flawed. So what if you’re lonely and sad now? Most people are. I’m proud of anyone who isn’t depressed, and I’m proud of everyone who hangs on while depressed. Let us all be fail women together! 🤗
I want people to have a safe space where they can be horny and show weakness. I don’t want anyone to feel ashamed of themselves for being imperfect; I want us to take pride in being flawed.
It helps, thank you for what you do
God I love this community so much. Exactly as I said in my earlier comment: “The moderation here is out of love for the community.” And I’m so happy that that is the case.
Seriously, thank you for being a great moderator ;w;
You can be both, its called being a disaster Lesbian :3
As for the text: I havent personally seen any Terfs here
Particularly in smaller communities like this entire Lemmy instance, it is much harder for toxicity to develop. Pretty much everyone knows that this community is about posting “lmao i’m lonely and/or horny” memes and it’s easy for new people understand that too (like it was for me).
Why does reddit have so much toxicity though? The issue is that most mods only really care about a community just being in an acceptable state. What they don’t do is actually make the community into a place where you want to spend more time on. They’re doing the bare minimum to moderate as many communities as possible so that they can get notoriety and moderate bigger subreddits because bigger subs (or reddit themselves) can pay those moderators.
Reddit even actively encourages this behaviour, not only by paying those mods but also with some decisions on how subreddit management works (not going into details because you could find my reddit username with that).
The moderation here is out of love for the community. I know very well that the even worst communities can be made into a cozy space with good moderation but if there’s no love for the community then there’s no reason for it (which creates a downwards spiral because the more toxicity, the less love for a sub, and the less love, the less proper moderation).
For context: I was a moderator for a pretty big subreddit and am the only reason why the sub still exists to this day (even if it turned to shit again after my departure)
All of that being said tho:
This image is just a taste of what’s out there that can be toxic
Please tell me why this is toxic, I don’t think I understand ;-;
"Please tell me why this is toxic, I don’t think I understand ;-; "
I am probably not the best person to respond given that I’m not actually subscribed here, but I get bad vibes from the image so I will take a crack at explaining why it feels somewhat toxic. Please bear with me as I fumble towards the right words.
So the main thing is that it feels weirdly dismissive of femcels. “Femcel” as a category is something that is hard to sum up, likely because femcels aren’t spoken about nearly as much as incels, but there is something there — a common experience that a bunch of people have, evidenced by this community. I wouldn’t call myself a femcel, but there’s been a lot here that I relate to. A key component of it, to me, is the notion of abjection — of being cast aside, or discarded. Lesbians and femcels are both marginalised groups, but the manner of marginalisation is different in a way that’s significant.
Of course, the image isn’t saying “all femcels are actually just lesbians”, but it still feels dismissive of the distinct experience of being a femcel, not least of all because I don’t see why someone couldn’t be both a lesbian and a femcel.
Probably the biggest thing that makes me be a bit “hmm” at the imagine is that it is reminiscent of a TERFy kind of lesbianism that tends to present men as being the ultimate problem. I think this kind of ideology is harmful to all men and women, both cis and trans, because of how it builds a notion of biological essentialism. This image, by itself, however, isn’t especially toxic in my view — these problematic things are “down river”, to speak, and I read OP as sort of saying “images like this risk going down a path with very bad stuff”, which I would agree with.
The image does capture an experience that a bunch of people have, where embracing being a lesbianism can be an escape from the feeling of abjection — comp-het did a number on me as a bi woman, so I can’t begin to imagine how rough that would be as a lesbian, and I imagine there are late-bloomer lesbians who would relate to this meme and that’s not a problem — those experiences are certainly not wrong, or problematic. However, if I look at this from the perspective of this community rather than individuals, I can see why memes like this, if they became commonplace here, could lead the community to drift in a negative way. That’s the tricky thing about community culture: it’s hard to point to individual instances of things being wrong until things are so bad it’s too late to prevent the shift (which is why I appreciate OP trying to bring these discussions into the forefront).
I have another bit that I am trying to figure out how to say, but it’s difficult to translate “vibes” into words, so thanks for sticking with me while I try. Earlier I said that the femcel experience is one of abjection, and I alluded to how being a late blooming lesbian can be liberating. This juxtaposition of liberation and abjection is one of the things that feels most off to me, and that’s why I think looking at it from the perspective of the wider community is useful. Like, what is this page for? Femcel content for femcel folk, I would say. I’ve heard some argue that identifying as a femcel or otherwise participating in femcel meme culture is harmful, and whether that is the case or not is beyond the scope of this comment (because idek). But I do think there is power in a community like this, in a sort of solidarity through abjection. I personally enjoy the memes here because although I’m quite far from a femcel in many respects, I have also regrettably been shaped by notions of what I should be, as a woman; I’m never going to do the typical “get married, have kids” thing, and there’s a weird part of me that grieves something because of that. It’s not that I grieve that experience, because I’m infinitely happier as a queer, polyamorous weirdo, but I grieve the fact that I’m marginalised because society has its rigid idea of who counts as legitimate and valid. I am proud of the life I have scraped together in the fringes of society, but I will always be a little bit sad. Julia Kristeva, whose 1980 essay was formative for the concept of abjection, writes that since the abject is situated outside the symbolic order, confronting the reality of being an outsider is inherently traumatic, and I really relate to that. I like femcel memes because they recognise this trauma within me and make it feel okay to be sad. Because of this, the image asking if they’re “just a lesbian” feels quite dismissive, as if it’s a simple binary. It also feels low-key dismissive of lesbianism too, though this may be me reflecting on specific bad experiences I’ve had with women who advocate for political lesbianism.
I hope this helps to give perspective on why someone might find the image toxic. I hope you can understand my perspective, even if you don’t agree with it. My perspective is only my own; Perhaps other people may find the image somewhat toxic for different reasons
Edit: typo
This was eloquently put. Thank you. In my mind, it was initially toxic because it describes a binary that has been used heavily in online spaces that are mostly TERF in nature. There are spaces that will say things like “Oh, can’t get laid. Maybe you’re just a lesbian.” with no intended irony.
Hmm you definitely do have a point, thank you for explaining c:
ma’am this is a
wendy’sjoke communityThere is a meme tho?
Is a post worrying about an influx of fds the thing that returns me to egg? I thought I hatched fully formed as cis ace, with garlic bread in hand. The reminder that this is a transfem space got me thinking about how relatable I find a lot of the posts
Put the bread in your mouth when you run and you fit in fine :p
Is that guy carrying a fondue pot in the top right?
I don’t know, but I now have the mental image of fondue pot guy slowly chasing someone - ominously plodding forward with cheesy heresy in hopes of sullying the putiry of the mouth toast.
I woke up that night from a tree branch out outside scraping against my window. Seemed like a storm was rolling in from the coast. I could just barely smell salt or something on the wind, it was humid and warmer than usual for January too.
I peeked my head out the front door to look at the sky. Full moon out, bright yellow, but obscured by some clouds. I went back inside to make a snack, now too awake to go back to bed. Popped a piece of bread in the toaster and watched idly as the coils glowed orange and hot like a campfire. I could still smell something in the air, thick and heavy. It was like I was in another world for a bit feeling the warmth of my toaster.
The pop of metal springs snapped me back to reality, my toast was ready. Perfectly crispy bread, no need for anything else. I wasn’t even hungry really, I just wanted something to occupy myself. I took my toast outside to sit on my porch and enjoy the weather before it got cold and rainy again. The wind was gone and a thick fog had poured into the valley like some kind of soup. The smell had gotten stronger as well, falling squarely between delightful and sickening. How long had it been since I came out here? Only a minute or so, I thought. The whole night felt surreal.
Sitting on my porch, pristine toast in my mouth, I saw a dark silhouette in the distance and I could feel my stomach drop. My unease shifted to horror as the figure move into the light of a street lamp. A man holding a steaming cauldron filled with truly unspeakable horrors, too filling for anyone to endure. I knew now that I had never woken up on this night, nor was I in a dream.
I was in a nightmare that I could not escape, no matter how I tried. Like Sisyphus was doomed to eternally push a boulder up a mountain despite it inevitably rolling back down, I too was doomed. The fate of my toast had been sealed the moment I made it, cursed to be ruined by that infernal fondue pot. I saw the person holding it clearly in that moment. The person I believed to only exist in stories:
Cheddy Blueger.
Addendum: I have no fucking clue why my brain thought this was worth writing, and honestly I tried to stop myself, but here we are. All for a dumb name pun. Thanks a lot brain.
Thank you for this ❤
And thank you for accepting this curse in stride.
But seriously, thanks. I put a good amount of effort into it despite not wanting to, and I had fun with it cause I love the whole premise of nonsense stuff being portrayed as if it’s scary.
Seriously though, it was a perfect mix of horrifying and hilarious.
Yeah, that was me after writing it too.
Also thank you. I wanted to write something that sold the spooky atmosphere just a bit with the whole tension build up thing that horror does, but also just have it be really mundane and not scary once the whole thing is read through.
Heavily inspired from this comment from a few months back (warning: the writing gets gory), which has a similar “nonsense horror” thing: https://lemmy.dbzer0.com/post/29305756/13960415
(Is there a better way to link comments on Lemmy?)
I think the comment link is good. It works for me from the web UI and Voyager without issue.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=S3TWjgThCnE
yes.
you would really like the source material imo, zorsith. It’s basically male nichijou.
https://myanimelist.net/anime/11843/Danshi_Koukousei_no_Nichijou
It’s not meant to be a trans fem space, just a space aimed at feminine people. So feminine enbies, women, men, etc, cis or otherwise are welcome.
can someone give me the context of what is so toxic about r/femaledaingstrategey? I’ve never been there
It’s essentially the female version of like incel pickup artists.
“High Value Males” and such.
It’s a bunch of people who hate themselves and think evolutionary psychology will bring them happiness. Evolution doesn’t want us to be happy, nor does it say anything about how we should live. Following that line of thinking treats every human being as disposable and worthless, even those who might enjoy slightly more privilege. Fuck nature; you’re all gorgeous and I want to love you all! 😤
I’m not sure where to start. It at times gets close to “let’s end the patriarchy by killing men” but unironically.
there’s also just a lot of gender essentialism and terf newspeak
spoiler
eg ‘penis preference’
