https://lemmy.nz/post/18610200/13255360
This user describes how most of the women-centered communities on Lemmy were shut down due to harassment of their members.
Another user adds “We need a safe space, but most of the women I know on here don’t have the time or energy to moderate it. And there’s so few of us, it feels like it’s not worth the effort anyway.”
Drag you killed blahaj, you are an extremely impressive troll.
Off topic drama farming. Nobody asked.
I had much more toxic behavior at reddit, but it is hard to imagine any safe space online anywhere.
it definitely depends where you go on all platforms. blahaj zone is good, world is bad. places moderated by mods with actual experience are generally good, places moderated by jordanlund and similar get pretty toxic pretty fast. :(
Lemmy is a relatively small and niche platform, imo small platforms tend to be like that. First men show up, then transfems, and then cis women. We seem to be at the second stage and while things can be done better (like a female only instance) I do think things will get better.
In Mastodon, this is typically solved with defederation, block lists, and admins enforcing mod policies. How come this approach doesn’t work for Lemmy? Is it not decentralized enough?
it’s not decentralized enough is exactly the answer. lemmy.world holds a huge portion of users and communities despite having middling at best moderation. illustrating this, one of my favorite communities (196) just recently tried to force everyone to migrate to .world. fortunately, the community at large openly rejected that absurd move, but it definitely exemplified the centralizing forces at play.
Yes. Just look at .world. As long as world is still federated into other communities, the fediverse is not federated.
Is there anything others can do to help? Feddit.uk wouldn’t tolerate this but I’m not sure what a regular user can do apart from look out for harassment, call it out and report promptly
wait, what? we have women in here? where?
I do get the joke; Even so, to this post’s credit, that this comment [at time of writing] is +3 is a great representation of their challenges.
The whole point is about people feeling legitimate using the platform. Jokes feeding on the trope “there aren’t women on the Internet” reinforces alienation. It makes sense they wouldn’t feel comfortable if dismissal is the community upvoted response to them -already- feeling unwelcome.
I really don’t see how upvoting a silly joke is a representation of anything.
It was solely meant for some giggles, to relax the conversation about a serious topic a slight bit. If you will, it’s more like karma whoring [no pun intended].
Understandable! Apologies if I came across overly chastising towards you specifically.
Instent vs impact is pretty hard in this case. Part of my response is from conversations with friends in STEM fields and the impacts of the male centric nature of the space (comp sci especially) has on them. Especially with how much men self-reinforce that position. It truly is an exclusionary space for them.
I hadn’t read as many comments in this thread yet and there are some well thought out discussions here too, which I’m glad to read.
There’s nothing to apologize for, really, you weren’t harsh and certainly not towards me specifically. You even acknowledged the joke, and just stated your opinion, which I simply don’t fully agree with.
I can’t remotely relate to the struggles some women have to go through in male-dominated fields.
I’m a software developer myself, by passion, and I have had some female coworkers with whom I had been designated on projects. And TBH, it never occurred to me to treat them any differently than male coworkers. Also, as far as I could tell, none of the other male coworkes treated them differently either.
So, just because there are some men out there acting like a douchebag by giving women a hard time to feel included in a field, doesn’t mean the world is full of these people. They’re simply more conspicuous, than the others.
Now, is this a cultural thing, that depends on the country one lives in? Or does it depend on the size of the company one works for? Maybe, I don’t know! I’m not a researcher/psychologist to provide any meaningful insight into this issue, since I neither can’t relate on a personal level, nor have I witnessed it.
All I can do, is either just continue scrolling, or, if I’m in the mood, post some silly joke to (hopefully) make at least one person giggle while reading through the comments.
PS: I really like the richness in your vocabulary.
And this I why I don’t either
Harassment is the new buzzword I guess, Good riddance
Hi problem.
Why don’t you go back to Truth Social?
Why don’t YOU go back to Truth Social (or Reddit or Gab), it suits you more I like the Fediverse more than you
You win some, lose some, it’s all the same to me.
It’s your duty to protect your fellow
menwomen. If we don’t stand together, we fall alone.
Keep in mind that this is probably very instance dependend. I am from Beehaw which generally does not tolerate this sort of thing and this expectation is stated very clearly. For us down voting is not even possible. We also do not federate with nodes that cause the biggest issues. So there are things that can be done but it is not perfect and has consequences.
Just mentioning.
Edit: Even with that, there has been discussion of Beehaw leaving the threadiverse due to these issues and lack of mature moderation tools. Not sure where that stands.
relevant discussions:
- [email protected] true colors: https://lemmy.cafe/post/10574267
- incredible find: https://lemmy.cafe/post/10217719
- epic ratio: https://lemmy.cafe/post/9597634
- lemmy is a worse platform for women than reddit was: https://lemmy.cafe/post/4821164
this issue of such a massive proportion can only be solved with intention—it’s not getting fixed by accident. recognizing the problem is the first step.
Hard agree about it being worse then Reddit. It’s gotten to the point where I don’t engage as much as I want to and thinking about going back to Reddit. I’m sure there are people that would like that.
Oh God I remember seeing that “incredible find” comment in the wild and being like, “What the fuck? Who thinks like that?”
and the number of upvotes 🤮 there is so much work to do and so many awful people out there
I’m not quiet about being a woman, but have yet to receive dms or inappropriate responses or dismissals due to that fact (via lemmy).
So I’ll shout it out here: I’m a woman, if anyone has a problem with that or just wants to talk about it, please reach out.
I want to help solve the problem but I need to see it better first. I only ever see cherry-picked examples like you have collected here instead of seeing it in the wild. Don’t get me wrong, the cherry-picked examples are bad, but I need more than a handful of outliers to really understand the problem and where it comes from before I can understand what I can do to help.
these aren’t cherry picked? these are quite normal—that’s why i started collecting them because they were so easy to find.
i respect your expression of experience of not having been on the receiving end of this that much—i will thank you to respect mine!
I do want to respect your experience and help to address the root problems leading to it.
That’s why I am asking and engaging in this conversation: to be better informed and to help others subvert hate in this hate-filled time.
I’m also an odd case, as an intersex person who was socially raised (predominantly) male but in recent years transitioned to female mostly to avoid harassment. I get so much less hate when I’m perceived as a woman that your experience is somewhat foreign to me. Whether presenting as a man or as a woman, I get hate overwhelmingly from women. Women in our society are hate-filled and angry and don’t know how to process emotions like discomfort caused by their intersexphobia nearly as well as men do.
A curated collection of the worst examples meets the definition of cherry picking. Cherry picking doesn’t mean that your argument is invalid, just that there is missing context from the rest of the distribution of interactions. Any sufficiently large community will have enough assholes that bad behavior can be cherry picked from the extreme end of the distribution to be used as examples if someone wants to paint the whole community in a bad light.
That said, the extreme and cherry-picked examples are still a problem that need to be taken seriously. My life is an extreme and cherry-picked example that runs counter to the common narrative from “feminists” who think that blocking and ostracizing dissenting voices is a solution, instead of recognizing that reaction as exclusive and anti-diversity. I understand that extreme/unusual or cherry-picked examples need to be taken seriously and considered as edge cases. I am not trying to dismiss you, although my word choice last night maybe could have been more explicit on this point. I’m sorry. What I’m trying to communicate is that I need to better understand the problem (in context) to be able to help be part of the solution.
We need a better solution, and I want to help work towards that. I believe that starts with discussions like this one.
Yeah okay thanks i guess it just comes off really not nice for you to say that.
if you posted a list of the worst incidents in your experience of abuse, i truly doubt you would love my response to be calling you a cherry picker. even if you don’t mean it, it looks like siding with the abuser. it’s NOT cherry picking to tell my literal own damn story of what i deal with. if you truly mean differently, maybe choose different words
Any list of my experiences of abuse is a fundamentally cherry-picked list because my experiences are so far outside (what feminists claim to be) the norm.
I am explicitly calling myself a cherry picker and would have no problem with you doing the same. Everyone else sees my problems that way. It’s just the truth.
I mean what I said.
This situation seems to have spiraled a bit—I logged off for a few hours and came back to a bunch of DMs from you.
I want to make it clear that I don’t have any hard feelings toward you. However, this conversation has reached a point where it’s no longer productive.
You wouldn’t go to the comments of a person of color as they share their experiences and feelings about racism and say, “I only ever see cherry-picked examples like you have here.” But that’s essentially what you said to me about gender-based abuse. That kind of comment is: a) dismissive and encourages others to doubt the stories of victims, and b) a conversation-ender.
What you communicated to me is that my lived experience isn’t enough for you. As someone with a normal life and not a researcher, I have no way to provide the additional “data” you seem to require.
Ok, since you brought up my two short DMs, I’ll post them here for public consumption.
I am very much trying to continue the conversation that you started about experiences of gender-based abuse by adding variety of experience from a very different perspective that contrast with the cherry-picked list that you provided of things you read online that resonated with your preconceptions. My examples are cherry-picked from my life; yours are cherry-picked from lemmy.
I am repeatedly echoing the sentiment of your original post: that we need to talk about and understand these things if we want to learn and grow. It’s how humans share data.
You claim that I am being dismissive only because the cherry picked examples from my life experience come from an opposite tail of the distribution of gender-based abuse as your list. I can’t help where my life experiences lie on this distribution, but I can share them (as you did) to provide some additional data that helps to fill out the range of the population.
You are dismissing me by saying that my experiences must be shared in bad faith to be dismissive/encourage doubt/end conversations. Please re-read my words. They are trying to communicate that I DESPERATELY want a conversation on this topic so that we can all learn and grow from each others’ experiences. Just because my experiences are different from yours does not make them bad-faith.
From your behavior, I’m starting to suspect that this is projection and that you are a bad-faith troll who refuses to engage with others if they have different life experiences. However, I don’t believe that yet because you and I have had several other conversations in various other comments sections over the past year which have been good and productive and I have grown to like you.
I want a productive conversation on this topic, yet you only seem to want to dismiss my perspective. This runs contrary to our past interactions. Please, I’m trying to have a productive conversation.
That said, the examples you give aren’t your personal lived experience as much as extreme examples of sexism that you’ve stumbled across on this site and curated. The examples that I’m giving are genuine and personal lived experience as a gender minority (neither male or female) rather than things I read online. I don’t think that that makes one set of examples more valid than the other, just that these fact make your most recent comment seem highly hypocritical. You are replying to a minority trying to share their experiences and feelings by dismissing me, encouraging others to doubt me, and ending the conversation without engaging with our differences of life experience. Then you accuse me of doing that instead of actually engaging with my perspective. Please reconsider. I’ll end this here, but if you want to have an honest and genuine discussion about how to solve the issue of gender-based abuse that you brought up, my DMs are always open.
I am a male with a penis but it is a very feminine penis and I stand in solidarity with your vagina. In fact,. Ny.penis’ name is Cassandra, which is neither here nor there but it is indeed a fact.
I do agree that the reports and downvotes of topics geared toward women are very widespread which is exhausting, and can make it hard to talk about the things you want to. Most of the virulent, misogynistic comments get removed quickly but often the damage is already done by then. I have learned over the years on the internet that sometimes I should let womens’, trans’ and other races’ people’s spaces be their spaces, and check carefully if whatever I have to say really adds to the conversation or just minimizes/drowns out the opinions of the minority audience the community is for. So I have had the urge to participate but have backed off. I’m a bit torn because the lack of activity can also make a community feel unwelcoming, but I am concerned that even my most well-intentioned comments could have a blind spot or inherent bias that makes it also unwelcoming.
The solution I see is that a woman safe-space instance is needed, whose admins ban misogony, unhelpful comments and reports, mass downvoting etc., to the point where some might feel the actions are like PTB. Beehaw has a strict moderation stance, they even defedded from lemmy.world due to the amount of toxicity they had to deal with, but they are able to curate a more welcoming experience. We are still “early days of Reddit”, it will take time and effort from users of all genders to make it a better place.
Tbf, i wouldn’t recommend Lemmy to anyone i know either for more reasons including this
Examples please?
One of my first experiences on Lemmy was a bunch of mens rights activists celebrating a women’s tech job fair being overrun by men.
I’m not surprised that this is a problem. Lemmy’s main demographic is the tech obsessed, that’s always going to be filled with misogynistic neckbeards.
Don’t say always.
You’re a man quipping back on a post about men forcing themselves to women’s spaces.
I used to think differently, but men who force their way into conversations just to say “not all men” are part of the problem.
There’s no actual understanding, just correction and dismissal.
I’m a woman quipping back to say that if you have the defeatist stance that the “tech obsessed” demographic will “always” be misogynistic, then it will never improve.
the tech obsessed, that’s always going to be filled with misogynistic neckbeards.
Generalizations are hateful.
No reason to out yourself lol
It’s a good job misogynists aren’t people. I might feel bad otherwise.
Back when I used Reddit, one of my favorite subs was TrollX. If we had a sub with that spirit, it would be a good start.
Are there secret communities on Lemmy? Not that secret communities should be a default, but I was invited to a secret sub on Reddit years ago that was all women. It was a true safe space from harrassment, where we could talk about feminine things that we knew wouldn’t gain traction in main subs. I have no idea how it started, but I knew that users who were invited to join had previously been vetted by the sub’s mods - they saw that I’d made feminist posts and multiple comments about being a woman, and didn’t go around picking fights. It was like a background check.
I don’t believe there is any one solution, but starting with dedicated communities (in the spirit of TrollX), with mods that smack down misogyny and (actual) trolls, sounds like the best way to start.
Yeah private communities on Reddit are an actual delight. /r/centuryclub was an unexpectedly fun community to be a part of. I kinda miss the memeing that went on in intro posts on there.
Let’s get away from the “X chromosome” bit now that we’re not stuck with Reddit’s bad names
It doesn’t need to be called the same thing.
I’m also not sure if it matters, but Troll X and Two X Chromosomes were very different subs. Troll X was more of a spin-off, and was never strictly for XX women - it was trans-inclusive by default. That’s what I’m hoping for here too.
Neither was twoxx arent many of the mods trans? Or is that a lie ppl say, I’ve seen that said a lot on redit
It does sound like something “conservatives” would make up tbh
I was on trollx and it was a nice community. A community with a name derived from two X chromosomes will never be fully trans inclusive though.
Does anyone have a suggestion for a new name?
Femmy? Might be a bit obvious, but that’s how I roll.
I feel like community names should be obvious.
