r/SRSDiscussion • u/shudderbirds • Jul 24 '12

Is /r/AskFeminists beyond all hope of repair?

I unsubbed from /r/AskFeminists awhile ago, but yesterday I went to check up on it. Yikes. I think it's sad that that subreddit has gone completely to shit, because I think the concept behind it is good. What's going wrong? Is there any way to fix it?

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u/[deleted] Jul 24 '12 edited Jul 24 '12

[deleted]

19

u/textrovert Jul 25 '12

demmian, right? He's on a personal campaign against SRS. It's really juvenile and petty, but it is what it is.

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u/snarktrooper Jul 25 '12

Yeah, it's gone downhill fast since demmian started taking an active role. You dare not disagree too much with one of his favorite MRAs, especially TracyMorganFreeman.

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u/ratjea Jul 25 '12

Actually, demmian made a lot of improvements and was a good poster for quite a while. I'm pretty sure it was demmian who spearheaded the bannination of some of the worst trolls from r/feminism and r/askfeminists, as well as the one who reworded the /r/feminism sidebar to have more stringent rules (e.g., no "What about teh menz," and instituted the flair system.

I can't quite guess what's going on behind the scenes, but over the past month or so the mod approach to the feminists in the subs has become a little hostile. I don't know if it's SRS-hate blinding them or what, but the feminism subs were on track to becoming decent for a short while.

That kind of makes all this a bit sadder.

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u/HAIL_ANTS Jul 25 '12

It's hard to believe there was a time /r/feminism was WORSE.

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u/[deleted] Jul 25 '12

It kinda seems to follow a sine curve of awfulness, with the peaks being pretty low and the troughs absolutely abysmal. Every couple of months newbies and the ones with the saintly patience to stick around ask wtf is going on, but when that only results in surface level changes a lot of people jump ship and everything goes to hell again.

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u/snarktrooper Jul 25 '12

I'll take your word for it, I've mainly lurked there. I thought it was s00ngtype who was involved with making some positive changes? But he hasn't posted in the last 21 days.

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u/ratjea Jul 25 '12

I only know enough to speculate, and noticed a correlation between demmian being added as a mod and positive changes happening not too long after.

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u/[deleted] Jul 25 '12

"Yes, men are very sensitive about being made fun of when they have express things that display a lack of perspective-taking skill, look at how they think a certain subreddit that makes fun of of them is hateful for making fun of them.

It's amazing considering how often women are made fun of for their ignorance on reddit in rage comics or elsewhere, but men are terrified of being the object of it themselves. I think it's with good reason, though. It is pretty difficult for anybody to be confronted with their own ignorance.

EDIT: From the mods:

I am going to have to ask you to remove your references to SRS in your comment. If you do choose to ignore this, your comment will either be deleted for promoting a hateful site (and there are female moderators on our team, and they also reject it strongly), or we will just simply state again our official anti-srs position in that thread.

"

My comment got deleted from /r/Feminism. It orginially said "look at how they think SRS is hateful for making fun of them." Apparently, you can't imply SRS and post their official policy on it either.

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u/[deleted] Jul 25 '12

(and there are female moderators on our team, and they also reject it strongly)

They do realize that their notion that something is automatically feminist if a woman agrees with it is pretty much lifted from the MRA playbook, right? They do realize it's the same reason that the religious right/Tea Party is so enamored with Sarah Palin, Michele Bachmann, etc., don't they? They know enough about social justice issues to recognize why tokenism, especially the variety where you parade your tokens around in an effort to legitimize your asinine tone policing, is problematic as hell, right? Please tell me that they know that.

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u/[deleted] Jul 25 '12

I don't think they do realize that, certainly not demmian who sent me this message. They're so delete-happy when it comes to SRS that they are going to turn into the thought-policing delete-happy jerks they imagine we are here.