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 
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’s_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.