A person whose username appears in this post has asked me to blur their user name, this is not some that is possible for me to do. Only the OP has the ability to make edits to their post. I am going to remove it for now as this is the only way I can affect the post. If OP wants to blur the user names I’ll restore the post. Thanks for understanding.
one of the few communities I have blocked one of the things I value is being able to chip in
So you blocked it? Lol seems strange
deleted by creator
I agree that the guy in the post is mildlyinfuriating at best, and much more likely a douche (never hear a woman use male as a noun like that, a very particular shibboleth). But I’m not sure I love. This community becoming half posts picking on specific users. Should we blur the usernames? Otherwise its an easy path to brigading and bullying.
Should we blur the usernames? Otherwise its an easy path to brigading and bullying.
Nah, it’s a public, open forum. “Brigading” is reddit nonsense & bullies can be reported.
The real crime is breaking accessibility & usability by not linking to the comment.
never hear a woman use male as a noun like that
I heard ‘male’ the same place I heard ‘female’, and this wasn’t surprising. I’m jealous at your certainty that you haven’t yet and thus never will. Apparently, though, “there are more things in heaven and earth, Horatio, than are dreamt of in your philosophy”
same. it’s so weird to me when people pretend like women don’t act this way… and can’t be sexist douchebags.
there are entire media outlets past and present that are basically dedicated to female douchery spouting crazy sexist hateful shit. but it’s normalized and not seen as a threat to society.
That’s on me, there’s a few typos in my reply. I was just saying I’ve never heard it, not that I think I will never hear it ever. And genuinely the only menfolk I’ve heard use it earnestly were akward teenage boys, and the older lads mocked them and told them they sounded lame.
This is in the UK (and ten years ago), so maybe it’s much more common in Australia or the US or something. But from the reaction it generally gets online, I get the feeling it’s generally looked down on (outside of humor, or sci-fi).
Absolutely. In fact, I would extend that past the user, to the community as well. This is a gate-kept (correct spelling?) community; that’s fine and I don’t think the rest of lemmy should care, but I somehow regularly come across discussions about the community or related, with many people in the comments frustrated. That frustration is natural and isn’t going to go away anytime soon. I don’t care about said community, but it’s annoying to keep coming across posts like this.
These posts are clearly just causing argument over a fairly small, specific community that most people aren’t, I presume, involved in. I wish we could just leave it alone; it’s gate-kept, let’s honor that and also not talk about the community outside of said community (exception: meta-communities dedicated to stuff like that).
I’d be annoyed if people couldn’t stop talking about e.g. the Linux community outside of the Linux community as well, with tuns of the comments angry about the Linux community because they don’t use Linux and are offended that the community doesn’t welcome them talking about windows or complaining about Linux. Obviously the community is intended for Linux users and while it’s not actively gate-kept, windows users (not looking to transition) aren’t exactly welcome. Funny parallel there.
If I weren’t a Linux user, and had blocked that community, I would be very annoyed at regularly seeing meta-commentary about the community I don’t care about and can’t contribute too. This isn’t a perfect analogy, but you get the gist of it.
It just seems to draw purposeless attention and outrage to something people could otherwise probably ignore. That being said, this is all pretty minor; I would have ignored this post as well, if it weren’t for the below. Clearly a number of people didn’t ignore it though.
I don’t know, I’m just lying on my sofa with a cold, and yelling at the sky…
Edit: Jesus Christ how did that get so long. I need to get healthy and get a life again. Being sick sucks.
Ya I don’t think folks need to be called out twice in a row in two different places. This would be a pathway for repeat offenders who refuse to acknowledge feedback perhaps?
Incel behavior includes using “female” as a noun when talking about women. Using “female” as an adjective is perfectly normal and common. It is fine to write “female coworker” instead of “coworker who is a woman.”
Some people are hypersensitive to wrongspeak.
Incel behavior includes using “female” as a noun when talking about women.
Sure: A -> B != B -> A
You … know that, right?
I have no idea what you’re trying to communicate, but I do understand the logical expression you used.
Probably trying to say that just because incels (allegedly) use the term “female,” it doesn’t mean that a person using that word must then be an incel.
Thanks. I’m not saying the poster is an incel. I’m just saying the objection to misuse of “female” has been primed by incels (and Ferengi). Without incels, there wouldn’t be such a knee jerk revulsion to it.
i really don’t even understand the concept of policing other people’s language use.
it’s like saying people who don’t have perfect grammar are stupid.
It’s not about the grammar. It’s the underlying mindset that might lead to specific word choices. If someone exclusively refers to women as bitches, that may be because they don’t hold much respect for women.
More subtly, if someone always refers to women as girls but rarely to men as boys, it could be telling us that they think of women as immature and less like fully formed adults.
For the word females, it’s more subtle again. It would be normal to refer to animals as male and female. For people we have the gender-specific terms man and woman. If you refer to women as females but not men as males, you may be revealing an underlying dehumanizing attitude. This is corroborated by what seems to be a common trope of incels calling women females.
I don’t think people are bothered by “female coworker”, which is perfectly normal. It’s the reference to a “female-only” community, when the actual com is called WomensStuff and describes itself as “women only” and “a women’s community”.
Not every female is a woman. Some of them are ladies or girls.
I don’t know what to else to say, the community describes itself as “women only” and he described it as being “female only”. You could (but probably shouldn’t) take it up with that community if you really feel their “women only” rule excludes girls. But I’m not sure I see how it excludes “ladies” which are generally considered a subset or synonym of “women”.
To continue your point, it’s true that not every’ female’ is a woman, indeed not every female is human. You get female seahorses, penguins and even female plants (dioecious ants like asparagus or holly). But for most English speakers, in most situations, female is an adjective and not a noun. So, you might ‘have a female friend’ , but you’re not usually ‘friends with a female’.
In my experience, the only linguistic situations where it is common to use female as a noun are 1) in scientific writing “the male mantis is decapitated by the larger female”, and even their is usually just to avoid repeating the name of species. Or, 2) within groups of akward men. I’m not sure if they’re trying to sound intelligent by aping scientific terminology, or are so removed from regular contact with women that they see them almost as another species.
Obviously it doesn’t mean that everyone who talks about ‘females’ is an incel, but its use is highly linked to people who spend time in communities that don’t involve a lot of women. Just as not everyone who uses “bogan” is Australian, but most of them are. Or, have spent a lot of time in Australian-adjacent situations.
Ok. I somehow missed that. I scanned for other uses of “female” a few times but was blinded to the one right next to coworker.
Maybe it’s just me, but in female-only community, I’m using female as part of a composed adjective. I’d say male-only community too, it just feels more natural. In fact, in an earlier comment I wrote women only, and then writing man only felt SO bad that I changed both to female and male.
Now that I think about it it’s probably because I used man instead of men. I’ll change both back but OOP miiight have followed my logic? Idk
In trans-inclusive spaces we use “woman,” in reference to the gender, as opposed to female, which usually designates sex.
Like a nature documentary, for example: “The female meetkat seeks out her pack,” as opposed to “The woman meetkat hollers at the girls.”
Incel behavior includes using “female” as a noun when talking about women.
Non-incels, too. Women, too.
The noun “female” isn’t a problem. Some don’t mind. Seriously. And it’s used self-referentially “in-group”: it shows up in feminist book titles, in dating communities (eg, “F4F/M”), classifieds (eg, “need a roommate […] females only”), etc. In conventional language, it’s an acceptable word.
The problem isn’t so much the word, but its usage, ie, the message. These superficial word criticisms fail to meaningfully engage the fuller context & meaning.
Imagine we make the name for an entire class a derogatory word! Meanwhile, the name for other major gender/sex remains innocuous. Seems like classic stigmatization: who is that serving? Is opposition to the noun “female” unwittingly subscribing to stigmatization & sexist thinking of those who’d welcome the stigmatization?
I saw that post too. I noticed it was a woman-only space and muted it. Godspeed to them, people deserve to have communities like that.
Same. I have a bad habit of shitposting into a comment section only to later see which community it was in. So I preemptively blocked them. The only community I did so, not to protect myself, but others.
X only communities shouldn’t be publicly viewable.
If they’re not publicly viewable, how do you expect people to know to look for them? How many communities / subreddits have you become a part of because you saw a post from it crop up on your feed?
Reddit or Lemmy isn’t a great to lace for private communities. If you want to be restrictive of who can participate go to a service that supports it like discord. If you want people to join your X only thing that is a you problem, it’s not on everyone else to help you with it.
It’s a public community - anyone is welcome to read the content. They only ask that people with the specific lived experience comment in the threads. If you’re not interested in the content then, like the rest of Lemmy, it’s on you to block it.
It’s not public if you block participation.
i love how this common sense reply is downvoted because it isn’t agreeing with the weird popular sentiment here that you should be able to take public space and make exclusive rules about who can use it.
also the hypocrisy of the reactions if the community in question was male only and women participating against the rules would be see as heroic instead of transgressive.
tons of FB and reddit communities are private. you can see they exist from search but you can’t access content unless you join
But if you do that, every community will be men-only because all the women will have left 🙃
Right, women can only exist in exclusive environments.
When men make up 97.5% of Lemmy’s overall traffic, yes, literally this but non-sarcastically. If women make posts in women-focused communities and the posts get overrun by men and the women get downvoted and dogpiled in their own communities, do you think they’re just going to stay on Lemmy?
No, they’re going back to Reddit where there are enough women users to have an on-topic conversation that doesn’t immediately get derailed.
Where’d you get that stat? That feels high. I certainly have never been asked to show my penis on Lemmy or anything like that. The signup thing also doesn’t ask for gender.
It’s a stat someone provided on c/womensstuff a long time ago when I joined. It’s something I just accepted without investigating further. I don’t remember whether that poster cited any sources, although it might have been from survey I can’t find, so I investigated it last night, anticipating this exact (and justified response).
Certain instances, instances like lemmy.ca, do run demographic surveys. But when I looked at that, it was actually a different number than what I gave. For instance, lemmy.ca’s (to my knowledge) most recent survey put women at 6.4% and men at 87.8%. Now, there are inevitable methodological flaws due to the nature of lemmy being a federated platform. ca’s survey had 513 participants, which is about half the sample size you’d want for a proportion to be representative of a population. But even if we had a sample size of 1000, it still probably wouldn’t be representative of all of lemmy, because I would assume Beehaw and Blahaj have a higher proportion of women and nonbinary people while many of the other instances would be mostly men.
That being said, just given the posts I regularly see on lemmy and the commenters on there, I would assume – with an unknown margin of error – that lemmy.ca is somewhat representative of lemmy, in that there is some male majority on the platform. It just makes sense because early adopted technology tends to be mostly male and most of the comments I see appear to be from men.
Because it’s hard or even impossible to prove a negative (my assertion that women aren’t an ultraminority on lemmy), I realize how easy it is to pick apart and dismiss my core argument based on my estimate of the number alone. And I don’t really have any recourse to this when data is as limited as it is. Initial signs point to the platform being a supermajority of men, but I could definitely be wrong.
Feel free to reply and contribute to the discourse, but I’m going to mute this thread and take a break from lemmy for a while. There’s such a vocal (likely) majority who are so offended by the idea of women having one community to call their own. I don’t think I’ll ever convince the folks here why I think c/womensstuff has the right to exist in its current form, and they’ll never convince me. Discussions on c/witchesvspatriarchy constantly get brigaded and go off-topic to the point where it’s often not usable as it was originally intended, and womensstuff would become that too if it allowed male commenters. If the mods change the roles or if other instances defederate Blahaj over “segregation,” there’s nothing I can really do about that and I’d probably just be done with internet forums at this point.
I’m remembering how I left Reddit in the first place because of how toxic those communities could get, and how comparatively harmonious lemmy is. That’s still the case, but I’m tired over all the discourse toward this one community – it’s a reoccuring thing – and I’m actively making things worse by continuing to debate people over when there’s no way one group will ever successfully convince the other.
Segregated anything is fucking dumb. Segregated internet communities are especially fucking dumb because anyone can be anyone on the internet.
Also I wonder how it would look if we made a Men’s Club community where only men were allowed and women were openly mob-scolded for participating. Would probably be considered a pretty sexist environment.
It exists. Or did. Menslib over on that other platform.
Hey, go for it! If c/mensliberation became men-only, I’d support them! There are some communities where women wouldn’t have anything to contribute, and that’s okay and wouldn’t be sexist.
But just don’t go full kiwifarms with a men-only community and I’d say that’s fine.
I’m not interested in a men’s only club. How very boring. What would we talk about that women wouldn’t be able to join in on the conversation? I never understood that. Women’s perspectives are valuable, just as any person’s perspective. 👍
It isn’t all or nothing, though. No one is taking away co-ed discussion groups. It’s okay that you think it’s boring, but it’s another thing to argue that single-gender spaces should not exist due to those personal preferences.
Both can exist. Both is good. :)
I agree. I’m not making an argument that they shouldn’t exist. If someone wants a single-gender/-sex community, that’s fine by me. 👍
I know I’m sending mixed signals, but those things are not equivalent. All of modern society is patriarchal and women face exclusion from spaces their entire lives because of their sex or gender. Things have improved slightly over the decades but this kind of misogyny is still a global pandemic. When men are called privileged this is why. That ignorance is a privilege. Lucky you, that you haven’t experienced this constantly for your entire life. Want to create a “Men’s Club” community? We’ve all been living in it our entire lives. Nothing new to see there.
I still feel dirty thinking about the womensstuff community, though. The first time I stumbled in there I had no idea where I was and someone said “As a man…” and then asked a question, and they were told to be quiet. Women experience that constantly, and it’s worse for girls. So much worse. Especially if you are the chatty type of autistic that I am. Having experienced it, I would never subject others to that. I felt that interaction viscerally and immediately blocked the community. I understand wanting to have a safe space, and I do have those with certain private groups, but seeing that behavior was awful. Even queer spaces are welcoming to allies, and I feel inclusion of allies in all social matters is critical for progress to happen.
those things are not equivalent.
If by “those things” you mean a men’s club and a women’s club, that’s kind of my whole point. They should be considered the same but are not. Given men’s history of women’s oppression, there’s a lot we can’t do without the assumption of possibly being oppressive or sexist. Sometimes it’s hard being a man of one of the first generations in the starting centuries of women’s liberation (if it will even ever conclude).
Not as hard as women have had it of course, but if we want equality for all, that means we have to act the part, from both sides. 🙂
FWIW that community is just inspired by something that already exists outside of social media. The community owner kept [email protected] up since it’s pretty active, but the new official/recommended one for dull stuff is [email protected] . They explicitly wanted it to be more inclusive (not that DMC was only restricted to men posting).
The official Dull Men’s Club website encourages women to participate as well, so I don’t think it should be considered as a men-only community:
Though it started with men, women now belong too.
If 99.9999% of users are men, it’s effectively a place where men can express themselves without the fear that some women will flood the comments.
That’s what women want with their women only spaces. And while that man wasn’t being that rude, until women feel more comfortable let them have their bubbles.
If 99.9999% of users are men, it’s effectively a place where men can express themselves without the fear that some women will flood the comments.
The point of the community is to share the dull things you’ve accomplished, not to go there and talk about stuff with the expectation that only men will respond. I was trying to tell that commenter that, despite the name, it’s not trying to be a man-only space, and people hopefully should not react to or expect the community to be as such. I just wanted to clarify since I think the comm is cool.
There’s another similar community called [email protected] if anyone objects to the name itself.That’s what women want with their women only spaces. And while that man wasn’t being that rude, until women feel more comfortable let them have their bubbles.
I agree with you.
That’s quite an “if” that you’re starting with.
The mens club you’re talking about DOES exist though. Since men are not a marginalized minority, that club is just called society.
Your logic mirrors asking, ‘Why not create a whites-only club?’ Technically, you could, but people would rightly view it negatively because white people, as a group, are not marginalized. Exclusive spaces for minorities exist to provide relief from the discrimination or bias they routinely encounter. For groups that do not face those barriers, everyday society already functions as their ‘exclusive space,’ which makes it difficult for non-minorities to understand why others might need a separate environment.
Society doesn’t allow women? And openly scolds them for participating? I dunno. It’s “similar”? I guess? Anyway, the other person makes a lot of the points I would make too so I’ll let y’all hash that out amongst yourselves.
We’re talking about Lemmy communities here, having a men’s-only space to discuss men’s issues is totally fine. Also, demeaning men’s-only spaces and placing men in a uniform category as “the oppressor group” is awful for society
I didn’t place them in the oppressor group, I said they weren’t oppressed.
Ok, let’s walk through the implication.
-Women are oppressed.
-Men are not oppressed.
Who again are you saying is doing the oppressing? You’re blind to the fact that most men are also oppressed, and pretending that men can just go out in society and be safe being vulnerable is willfully ignorant
You’re putting words in my mouth and confusing the difference between a demographic and an individual. AS A DEMOGRAPHIC, women are oppressed. AS A DEMOGRAPHIC, men are not. We’re talking about statistics here, not individual experience.
The fact that some men are oppressed does not imply men are equally or more oppressed than women.
The fact that women AS A DEMOGRAPHIC are oppressed and men AS A DEMOGRAPHIC are not does not imply all men are oppressors. It DOES imply that men opress women, but like… fucking duh? If men aren’t pressing women, then who is? It doesn’t mean all men are oppressors, but are you seriously going to sit her and act like the majority of domestic abusers, sexual harassers, and discriminators AREN’T men???
You’re interpreting a defense of women exclusive spaces as an attack on individual men. You should unpack that.
Well then not all man are oppressed isn’t that okay to have a man-only communty?
Men are also being oppressed by the societal norms. Sure. Thing is, the severity of such oppression is not on the same level, and while real, is not a valid comparison to female oppression.
The oppressor is patriarchy, both men and women enforce it. Not everyone, but many. The way our societal norms, and other people in society peer pressure us into boxes is oppressive, and again, while men also are affected negatively by it, it’s just not comparable.
So yeah, you made up that implication due to, and this is me being benign here, your misinformed self. Given that the percentage of male/female users on Lemmy being so male skewed, its effectively a men only online space. Let women have their women only online spaces.
Literally nothing is stopping you from creating a community for men with a rule that only men participate. The difference is that in the community you’re thinking about though, women wouldn’t be constantly trying to mess with it. There are hundreds of communities to choose from. You’re not entitled to participate in them all.
women wouldn’t be constantly trying to mess with it
Is someone purporting to speak for all women? Seems arrogant.
The major point isn’t whether or not it’s possible to create it. The major point was that it would be considered sexist, I imagine. Or at the very least a little cringe.
Bingpot.
A segregated internet would be more like if they had a whole version of Lemmy for all topics but only for women, and then didn’t also participate in the other one.
This is just one community calm the hell down they can have their space.
If they want their own space, they are just bigots. That’s what they called me when I excluded them from the general space in the past!
-the people arguing against that comm, probably
You’ve angered the incels.
Fuck em. “Oh but it’s a free Internet people can participate wherever they want”
Yeah you have a right to be a total dickwad and scream in people’s faces at the grocery store, don’t be surprised when everyone thinks you’re an ass though. They don’t want your input. That. Simple.
Replies like this make me wish Lemmy let you give people Gold like Reddit.
Congratulations, you’re the man they’re trying to forget exists for 10 fucking minutes a day in their off time!
Who said I was a guy? Again, anyone can be anyone on the internet.
glances at profile
Def a guy
Give up, brah: you lack conclusive proof. Lemmy doesn’t require ID verification, so anyone can be anything.
Funny how some people downvote even the most innocuous comments.
You can assume my gender or race all you want. It doesn’t make you right.
I downvoted because it was a deflection that didn’t address the very real issue presented to you
The issue being what? And how did I deflect? I refuted their comment, that’s not a deflection, that’s showing how dumb it is to claim you are anything since people can claim to be anything on the internet.
Now I’m a ghost and will start a ghost only community.
So based and repelled bro. You’re for sure postmaxxing. Absolutely mewing on the haters. more dunks than a 90s kangaroo. You sure told those bitches.
Anyway to be serious for a moment: “the internet is full of wreckers so why even bother” is a fucking wrecker argument. You are the problem. Do you see?
What the hell is a wrecker?
I think you’ve replied to the wrong person since my comment is about assuming genders of people on the internet not wreckers on the internet whatever that might be.
You did in reply to this post
I am in full support of the community rules but that’s an interesting claim when like 1/3 of the posts are about men lol
Downvote me all you want
Ok
Maybe the mods over there need to start doing genital inspections to determine who can participate or not.
I wonder too- if a woman posts there and then transitions… Should he go back and delete all of his posts?
exactly. this is the whole problem with trans stuff and gender essentailism.
who the fuck is to say what a woman is? a lot of people tie to totally arbitrary nonsense.
the concept of gender specific spaces is loaded with the notion that one sex/gender is worthy and the other in unworthy.
It’s entirely about self identification. There’s no gender policing, they just kindly ask people who start their comments with phrases like “as a man…” or “not a woman, but…” to refrain from further commenting. They don’t even delete the comments unless the guy keeps going. Even still, inevitably if the post reaches the front page all the women in the comments will be drowned out by highly upvoted “as a man…” commenters. They just want to have a conversation without being shouted over.
Women-only spaces always seems to lead to TERF-dom. You’d think people would learn eventually. It just reinforced heteronormativity and viewing gender through a binary lense. It sows division.
A lot of the posts people complain about these spaces could very well be made by cis women who just aren’t perfomatively feminine enough. The “No True Scotsman” fallacy and all that. Back when I was on Reddit whitepeopletwitter and blackpeopletwitter used to have drama all the time about the racial identities of people using anime girls as profile pictures.
Yeah, you guys. We shouldn’t let women talk among themselves, they’re so irresponsible it ALWAYS leads to the EXACT SAME place. Let’s make sure we keep an eye on these females, just to make sure they’re not getting out of line. Pfft, “women only?” You’d think we’d learn by now! These women NEED a man to keep them track, we know what ALWAYS happens. Jesus christ.
Are you suggesting that women are such dainty and delicate creatures, they can’t handle a man’s internet? They need protected from the smarter and meaner 14 year old boys from 4chan?
Maybe the real solution is to just keep everything separate but equal? That famously works out well for everyone and never leads to any issues /s
That’s really ignoring a mountain of history. Up until a decade ago, “there are no girls on the internet” was a common saying.
I just see it as a way to foster and encourage an under represented segment of the community. It feels completely valid when that segment is still often met with hostility from weirdos.
Was it a common saying or were you just on 4chan too much?
It’s definitely common and it’s been around forever. We’ve always been here, but the vast majority of guys on the internet are so fucking toxic we just hide it. It’s true for me, at least. There are reasons I avoid PvP games like the plague, avoid toxic places like the Steam Forums, and refuse to use voice chat unless it’s a private game among friends. It gets hammered into you the first time you make the mistake of thinking you can participate with a group of boys, and that goes back before the internet. The internet creates an illusion of anonymity that makes those bad traits infinitely worse. So we mask and hide, but we’re here.
My experience has been the same and I’ve been on the internet since the mid-90s. I have always avoided voice chats unless with friends or trusted guildies and avoid things that will identify me as a woman because people can get so toxic. This happens in real life too, especially in gaming spaces. I’ve been laughed at when I said I taught my male partner how to play MTG until he confirmed it. I used to hear I’m “not a real woman” because I’ve been playing video games since I was a kid, it’s a lot better now, but it’s still there.
The womensstuff space is a huge breath of fresh air and I love having a space to speak about topics with fellow women. Quite a number of men have commented there and are very polite when they are corrected.
https://knowyourmeme.com/memes/there-are-no-girls-on-the-internet
It seems like it started before 4chan. 4chan probably amplified it and helped spread it though. All the bad things either start there, or it’s users violently clutch and hang on to it until it seems like it started there.
That is were I heard it first though so you are right in calling me out. It’s been a while, longer then just a decade ago thankfully, but I spent a bit of my teen years on there. It really feels shameful to admit. Overall, just a gross place.
I spent a couple of my teenaged years there too. I remember I printed out the “rules of the internet” post, which includes that “rule” and had it on my desk in high school. “For the lulz”. It’s important to grow and change, both as individuals and as a society. My friend group back then was a bunch of supposedly straight cis teens who threw around all kinds of slurs, and we thought it was okay as long as we weren’t actually being mean to other people and we kept it amongst ourselves. Largely, it was. But a lot of the same people who loved to throw the F slur around back then have boyfriends now. At least one person transitioned.
But my broader point is that it’s very easy to convince ourselves that something common in our own bubbles is ubiquitous across the internet and across time. Other people close to my age had very different experiences with the internet because they were in different communities. I’m sure that the youth today, with TikTok and Roblox and whatever else they are doing, have an entirely different culture. The older people on Facebook have a very different culture. I’m sure non-English speaking communities have different cultures.
And that’s also part of why I’m against segregated spaces. They create an echo chamber and reinforce societal divisions.
Any time some bigoted anti-trans law about bathrooms is proposed, progressive people advocating inclusivity point out that it’s impossible to define what a “woman” is in a manner that both excludes all trans-women and includes all cis-women. And I fully support that, which is why I have a hard time supporting exclusionary policies on the internet too.
things aren’t any different today dude. my teenager nephews do the same thing.
Your teenaged nephews may do the same thing, but my teenaged nieces do not. The internet is a gigantic place, and it’s dangerous to extrapolate our own limited perspective onto the whole.
Extremely common. In gaming, twitch, YouTube comments, forums, 9gag comments, Reddit… The presence of women has been minuscule for a long while, and that’s translated as hostile to women.
9gag
Really? I don’t even remember the last time 9gag was known for anything other than being uncool and irrelevant.
Sounds like you’re in a bubble of a lot of sexist communities. That’s real unfortunate- you should maybe try to get out of that.
Why are you saying I am in those spaces now? You asked in past tense, I answered how it was 15 years ago.
I left most of those a long time ago and several have changed. It’s important to remember history, 15 years is pretty recent.
some people in certain communities get high on their own farts by thinking everything there is sexist, any anyone who participates must also be sexist. and then also participate.
you can’t fix stupid. i remember being part of dating communities in the past and everyone thought the community was sexist against their own sex, mostly when people challenged their sexist assumptions about the other gender being another but awful and horrible. like all the women who said men were shitty and awful sex fiends thought the community was pro-male. it was hilarious. and vice versa for all the women haters.
what it was was shitty people being shitty and engaging in self-fulling prophecies, for the most part. and it would be funny when they dated someone who didn’t fit the ‘x is awful’ trope… they would complain how ‘boring’ and ‘weird’ the person was. the funny thing about the people who weren’t sexist as hell… was they never really whined about things being sexist.
there are no girls on the internet
You misunderstood the meme. Unless anyone verifies IDs, anyone online can claim to be whoever, and everyone’s a fucking liar. 12/f/cali? Definitely FBI.
Simping for someone online claiming to be female is senseless. Personal characteristics shouldn’t matter. Better to assume they’re a nameless, sexless avatar.
the point of the saying was that your sex/gender shouldn’t matter for internet comments.
it wasn’t to exclude women.
self identifying yourself as a man or women will radically change how people interpret your comments. a lot of people assume i’m a woman from the way i comment. then they would find out i’m not a woman and harass the shit out of me for upsetting/subverting their gender expectations.
As a man… just stating that it has nothing to do with the rest of my comment, but when I see those communities I just filter and move on. I do the same for all the gross *Moe communities with cartoon children dressed inappropriately.
Reading this as a self hoster: god damn it, is there ANOTHER fucking instance I need to defederate?
Just FYI, those are almost all on the same instance, and you can block that instance as a whole. It’s dedicated to anime, so there’s not a ton of collateral damage.
If you block the instance then you block legit communities too though
Yes, but that’s only an issue if you are interested in those other communities. In this case, the instance is dedicated to anime, so it’s only an issue if you want to browse those other anime communities.
I honestly don’t know what you’re offended by. Maybe I wasn’t reading closely enough, but could you spell it out for me?
Maybe I believe in community rules too strictly.
If the rules say women only, it means women only.
Ah, I was thinking it might just be that, but didn’t want to assume. Yeah, I don’t think it’s that big a deal. If the commenter came in and said some misogynistic shit, definitely, but just for commenting? Eh. Yeah, he shouldn’t have, but how much harm was actually done?
What he said is not bad, it’s not about that, it’s the fact that he read the rules and still thought that he had every right to participate. He’s the reason the community was set up, to have a space where men don’t interrupt and insert themselves into every conversation no matter what.
How does an anonymous person on Lemmy prove they are a woman?
Yeah, men should go to the back of that bus right?
Oh, poor poor oppressed men that aren’t allowed anywhere on the internet!
I personally do not care, I usually do not want to go into communities/places where I’m not welcome. But disceiminating basing on gender, sex, sexuality, race, ideology, etc… usually frowned upon.
I just find that double standard quite pronounced.
The problem is not being allowed somewhere. Women are allowed pretty much everywhere, too.
What is inadequate is building what are essentially hate groups and not letting the opposite side defend themselves.
This turns to unnecessary and brutal radicalization that is antithetic to a productive change.
Women enters men only space = stunning and brave
Man enters women only space = sexist and misogynistic and low key sexual assault…
Also, online, womens only spaces are usually just as toxic as fuck as any incel space. We just dont call them what they are. So, IMO, some rules need to take a big long hard suck of societies asshole.
Got and good examples for that statement? I can’t really think of any situations where it is seen as stunning and brave for a woman to enter a men only space. There is a big difference with mostly male and only male.
Like every STEM field ever?
Even if it is just mostly male, it is still seen as stunning and brave. When it should just be the norm.
Like every STEM field ever?
Not male only, I think you may have misunderstood my point.
I suppose the most obvious example is men in sheds. It somethings that was created especially to deal with the issue of male loneliness, especially amongst the older community. Basis for being single gender, was to address those older gents who feel pressures to act a certain way around women. This was that one place they could go and just hang out doing wood working and what not. It was for men to make connections with other men, because men, seemingly, struggle with making or even keeping connections.
Enter the women, who think its sexist. Who think that men dont need just time to themselves. Theres mixed sex and single sex(female) things all over the place. But some women see men only spaces, and think “Not on my fucking watch!!!”.
Every day we talk about mens mental health, then some gaggle of cave brained cunts turns up to tell men how they have to sort their own shit out. Men in sheds did just that. Then it got popular, and then that same gaggle of cave brained cunts turns up talking about how male only spaces are toxic… Rinse, repeat, ad Infinium
https://www.4bc.com.au/women-are-demanding-entry-into-mens-sheds https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/cg5qd9l3094o
Why cant men have male on spaces? Why can we have our man caves? And if we do, why is it a a bad thing?
Theres a guardian hit piece on the “disappointing” vote to have one of the last remaining gentlemans clubs remain male only. They also have a little go at “mostly white” like thats a fucking crime as well.
Same thing happened at the Flyers club. Men only for 141 years, then all of a sudden women want in and its sexist not to let them.
We cant even just play fucking video games, without getting hammered over the head about how its childish and that we need to grow up. God fucking forbid, we have a fucking hobby and some fun together.
https://time.com/archive/6709832/organizations-not-for-men-only/
There’s also the Scouts formerly known as Boy (“Boy Scouts” no longer exists, it’s now “Girl Scouts” and “Scouting America” now.)
Male only spaces are often sued out of existence.
So I recently looked at both Girlscouts and Scouts of America for my daughter. Honestly when I tried to compare with Scouts of America the folks from Girlscouts were very sexist and very quick to bash on their competition while Scouts of America was just like “yeah were gonna go hiking and make pinewood derby cars and have a good time” both organizations have their problems but Scouts of America was noticably the less toxic of the two at this point
Tbh I’m not surprised, I do think that SOA was forced to be inclusive, but they have been for years now and so they’re probably used to it.
Conversely Girl Scouts not only were never pressured to be inclusive, they’re actively shielded from having to be inclusive. You think they’re sexist when a girl wants to join you should see how they treat boys who want to join!
Also worth noting, the whole reasoning behind forcing the Boy Scouts to allow girls was “because the girl scouts sucks.”
Personally I think the correct answer was either:
A) Boy/Girl scouts merge, they’re both now Scouting America and everyone can join. Could even expand it to adults that missed out as kids and want to learn survival skills or want to hike and camp with other adults (separate units of course from the kids lmao, but I’ll shoehorn in a healthy “third place” for adults any chance I get). And keep selling the Girl Scout cookies but call them Scouting America cookies now.
B) Nothing. Boy Scouts and Girl Scouts remain limited to their respective genders, and if “girl scouts sucks” then it is their responsibility to improve and make it not suck instead of forcing their way into the Boy Scouts. Leaves NB out to dry though, and could get weird if someone wants to transition but their Scout Credits don’t transfer with them.
But we got neither, instead we got “the boys do not deserve their own space but the girls do” which is a little weird to me (though entirely too common.)
I am glad however that you were able to go with the less toxic option, and I do still love Thin Mints, I just wish they’d have taken option (A) instead of option (D)ouble Standard.
This is not an instance for incels, please leave, and take your mother issues elsewhere.
Username checks out…
True let’s look at some of those super toxic posts that are very man hating, all taken from the front page
Do you want to have kids?
I hate being pregnant
essay on menopause
tweet about is a woman being rude, or are people conditioned to think a woman being assertive is rude
I actually did not find a single post about a man in about 30 posts. Curious.
Reading is hard, when youre so desperate to make a point that no one made, right?
Me: online, womens only spaces are usually just as toxic as fuck as any incel space
You: Hurr durr, LeTs LoOk At ThE fRoNt PaGe Hurr durr!!!
Theres loads of female only spaces that turns into toxic shit, just like men only spaces can do. Doesnt mean they all do. Cant believe you "not all womens spaces"d me lol
Almost like women were systematically oppressed by men for centuries or something
And thats why men arent allowed to some quiet time in the shed?
He said female. That’s apparently the new n word
He read the rules of the community and decided to break them anyway.
post about women’s only space
150+ comments, 50 downvotes
Close enough. Welcome back reddit
Yeah, I’m downvoting this shit. This is not mildly infuriating, this is just unnecessary ragebait and the fact that OP didn’t even blur out the usernames clearly shows their intention to go against rule 5.
That’s community’s mods are super nice. Probably too nice TBH.
…But yeah. Follow community rules, or post elsewhere. What is so hard about that?
I think it’s hard simply because browsing by /all, or even by communities you follow and then just in your main thread, is not set up to highlight the community or it’s rules. If something hits the front page of /all I’m rarely digging into the communities specific rules or even where it’s coming from to an extent. Only to say, it’s a learned behavior to care about the communities specifically in this site aggregator system.
All of that being said, people of course should respect community rules and learn the behavior of identifying what room they’re in before engaging with that community. I’m just not surprised when these flimsy barriers fail.
Is the best behavior to block any community you don’t or can’t participate in? I personally don’t love that behavior because I like seeing what everyone is discussing in threads, but that’s a reasonable solution. Obviously my current strat is just reading the community before posting (like not commenting negatively about Star Gate getting a new season in the star gate community as an example that happened today lol).
Wandering in, missing the rule sign, getting corrected, and apologizing is fine. I’ve done it; the mods there couldn’t have been nicer about it. It’s not an ideal system, no, but it works well enough; it’s the mods shouldering that burden more than anything.
…The problem is when the guys are corrected, yet keep talking anyway. Which I see happen a lot.
There is no excuse for that.
Is the best behavior to block any community you don’t or can’t participate in? I personally don’t love that behavior because I like seeing what everyone is discussing in threads, but that’s a reasonable solution.
I feel extremely mixed about this, yeah. I feel weird even talking about it.
I personally don’t love that behavior because I like seeing what everyone is discussing in threads, but that’s a reasonable solution.
The women’s space… doesn’t prohibit lurking? On one hand, the community is public, and I’m curious about the perspective in the discussions. I’m interested in understanding them so I can be more respectful person myself.
I upvote their posts so they get more exposure.
…But I don’t want to violate their privacy either. Blocking is reasonable. Right now, I just upvote them but don’t enter the threads.
Obviously my current strat is just reading the community before posting (like not commenting negatively about Star Gate getting a new season in the star gate community as an example that happened today lol).
Read the room, yeah.
IMO TV fandoms shouldn’t worship their material. Negative discussion is allowed, otherwise the space gets toxic.
In fact, this kinda happened to one of my personal fandom spaces, /r/thelastairbender: among other things, they idolize ATLA (the original series) like a diety, to the point where anything different (including other material like Korra or the Netflix adaption) is demonized. Deeper stuff like the novels, fanfics or speculative lora is not welcome either.
That sucks. It’s all to common; the Star Wars fandom (for instance) is notorious for it. And its why some negativity and ‘outsider perspectives’ should be welcomed in such spaces.
The women’s space is different though. It’s basically a shelter from the shit this group puts up with IRL and online, so being more sensitive to barging in makes sense.
I completely agree. I just wish I could systematically prevent myself from making any mistake lol, or like anyone from making the first mistake.
Anyone doing it intentionally is a dick and should be blocked. This is just an interesting problem for the platform we’re on and I’m excited to see how the Internet develops overtime to fix this.
I just wish I could systematically prevent myself from making any mistake lol, or like anyone from making the first mistake.
…I guess we theoretically could, via a Lemmy or Piefed PR, heh.
As an example, we could implement an opt-in feature that pops-up community rules before one is allowed to post. Kinda like Discord, but less obnoxious.
That’s one reason why I like this place. If something about the site’s UX design in problematic, there’s somewhere to go to get it improved. With any corporate social media, your only assurance is that it will get worse with time.
I think that’s a great idea.
how do you measure someone else’s intention behind an internet post? other than your own arbitrary judgement of it?
That’s kinda the idea behind moderation.
It’s why it’s best done in small communites, as the narrow context narrows the scope of the arbitrary judgement.
I mean, I like the other reply to this comment as well, but if a man posts in an all women community twice in quick succession after being warned it’s pretty easy to assume their intentions are bad - right? Like there are things people can say or do that are so engrained in the behavior of bad faith actors that you can kinda spot them.
My point was just to reinforce that I agree with the notion that people can maliciously attempt to ruin a community or discourage individuals/groups from posting and that they should be banned. “No Nazi’s in the bar” kinda thing.
I think it’s hard simply because browsing by /all, or even by communities you follow and then just in your main thread, is not set up to highlight the community or it’s rules. If something hits the front page of /all I’m rarely digging into the communities specific rules or even where it’s coming from to an extent. Only to say, it’s a learned behavior to care about the communities specifically in this site aggregator system.
Bingo. This is the classic ‘read the sidebar’ crap from reddit. most users aren’t reading hte sidebar because the side bar doesn’t exist for them when they click in front the front page.
or the ‘this post is already been made why don’t you search instead of making new posts’. because search is stupid and useless for the most part, and a thread from six months ago is likely not relevant today.
because that isn’t how a public internet site works.
if you go to a public park and hold a women only event, and get upset men are in the park and wander over and are curious what is going on… and get upset about those men then the problem is you and your unrealistic expectations of exclusivity.
if you want a private exclusive type of space… then make it private and exclusive. that way you can control who views and interacts with the event and even hire security to keep the ‘wrong’ people out.
like if the mods want to auto-ban everyone who doesn’t personally verify with them their womanhood, that’s their business. but expecting people to self-police their gender is a dumb expectation.
personally i have a dick but i don’t really identify as being a ‘man’. nor do identify as being a ‘woman’. i’m just a person. so am i therefore allowed to commentate? or is the mods who determine my sex/gender status, regardless of how i perceive myself?
To correct your ‘public park’ analogy, the space is public. Men can wander in. But it has clear signs posted at the only entrance saying its a space for women to speak, please be quiet, otherwise.
If you wander in and violate that rule by electing to speak up, that is no one’s fault but yours.
personally i have a dick but i don’t really identify as being a ‘man’. nor do identify as being a ‘woman’. i’m just a person. so am i therefore allowed to commentate? or is the mods who determine my sex/gender status, regardless of how i perceive myself?
…A primary reason for that rule is basically “don’t be a dick about this being a women’s only space, please.”
If you feel you qualify as a woman to speak in the space, go for it! That’s the idea. But you specifically say "nor do [I] identify as being a ‘woman’. "
But making an issue out of it is exactly what is unwanted.
I don’t get why this is so hard to grasp. It’s simple.
just because i feel that way doesn’t mean the people in charge feel that way.
it’s just part of life. mods gotta mod. this entire post to me just seems like moral grandstanding/public shaming.
and further, i commented in that thread too. i came from the front page of lemmy.world. there were no rules posted. there was no signage. but i didn’t get called out by the mods because i ‘type like a girl’ and often pass as a woman on the internet.
I’m not trying to grandstand. My issue is with these presumptions:
like if the mods want to auto-ban everyone who doesn’t personally verify with them their womanhood, that’s their business. but expecting people to self-police their gender is a dumb expectation.
They’re not checking you at the door. They aren’t auto banning anyone. They very politely point out the sidebar to a few posters, then request them to stay quiet; that’s the extent of it.
…If you don’t make an issue of that, it’s not an issue.
if you want a private exclusive type of space… then make it private and exclusive. that way you can control who views and interacts with the event and even hire security to keep the ‘wrong’ people out.
But this is unrealistic, as then they wouldn’t get nearly as much participation in the space. It’s a public gathering spot, by choice.
Again, my specific problem is with commenters that are shown the rules by the mods, yet willingly choose to ignore them.
Just because you think rules are unrealistic does not give you a right to ignore them once asked. That’s how every community here works. Yet they seem to get tons of posters carrying that bad attitude, with that same line of argument.
That’s what makes me bristle. Respecting community rules (once known) is basic human civility, and people are perfectly capable of ‘self-policing’ that. I do not like the rejection of that + the policing of others in its place.
The public park is owned by everyone, not just the women. You would be correct to be upset by men being excluded from this public space.
Comms are not public assets. Your use of any comm is entirely at the pleasure of the administrators of that comm, and their designated moderators.
Your opinion on the way they implement and enforce their rules is entirely irrelevant within their comm.
My suggestion would be to do what you would for any other comm whose behavior you do not support and/or whose rules you find reprehensible: block them and move on.
they should make their community private then. that way they can control who virtually walks in the door, so to speak.
as is, there is no door. it’s a public space that anyone can access.
But we are allowed, and encouraged to read it, just not post. It is public.
You are entitled to your opinion. They are entitled to theirs. I am entitled to my opinion: what they do with their space and who they allow into it is no concern of yours. Mind your own business, and leave them to mind theirs.
Lets say you go to a public building and in that public building there is a room marked women only, lets say in that room are some toilets, would you go in that room? Since it’s a public space in the same building as all the other public space, the only difference is that portion of the space is understood to be only for women, or those that identify as women.
You may stumble in accidentally, and you will be gently corrected, but if you keep stumbling in, it’s gonna start to seem weird, and the corrections will get less gentle.
yeah i would. esp if the men’s room was locked.
i have gone into plenty of women’s rooms before. i don’t really give a shit about gender/sex rules when it comes to not shitting my pants.
sometimes when i came out a woman got all huffy, but they never did anything about it. because it’s pretty stupid ultimately. everyone has to shit. and most people dont’ care women use the man’s room.
but i don’t live in gender exclusivity/anxiety land like many people do. most gender exclusivity people have identity issues hence they need to police other people’s gender and sex and make massive generalizations about others gender and sex because they lack self-awareness and understanding and confidence.
Perhaps this is an exception, but I’ve disregarded that rule to use the building’s only baby changing table a bunch of times.
Yeah, that’s fine, a bit outside the metaphor as there is no analog.
Basically just that socially enforced boundaries are a thing even in public spaces.
a lot of places have rebranded those to ‘family restrooms’. which is great.
You can tell this guy posted himself wearing a “This is what a feminist looks like” t-shirt on linkedin.
When I first started here I had a relevant point for a women’s only community on the front. I asked if my opinion was welcome, told it was not (but fairly respectfully), and the only comment I left was an apology.
Like it’s not hard to be respectful, even if you hold a slightly different opinion. I don’t go to any of the “on grad” posts and let my opinions about Stalin fly(which are largely negative despite me agreeing with a lot of the tenants of communism).
The only exception I make about being respectful is anyone bragging about not voting last election in the US. You all suck and I will not let you live it down peacefully. Ffs vote third party! But don’t brag about being a lazy POS and standing by while fascism takes over!
Ffs vote third party! But don’t brag about being a lazy POS and standing by while fascism takes over!
And what if your political party choice is ‘no parties’? Everyone else can vote 3rd party to appease their choice, except for those who don’t believe in statism?
You’ll be tolerant to fascists, yet hurl disrespect to anarchists? How alarming.
You out here actively supporting by being hazy and pretending your farts smell better.
You out here actively promoting ‘throwing your vote away by voting 3rd party’ but hating other people who act on their political values because they what, wasted their vote? It’s a contradictory and ill-thought out stance.
Well even if you believe political parties shouldn’t exist, you should still participate in your democracy. It’s not like the system goes away if you refuse to participate, so you might as well work within it
Not-voting is participating in representative democracy.
You get one day every four years to have a say, and this is a chance to say ‘No.’. That’s just as valid as ‘Yes, but…’.
Needs text alternative.
Images of text break much that text alternatives do not. Losses due to image of text lacking alternative such as link:
- usability
- we can’t quote the text without pointless bullshit like retyping it or OCR
- text search is unavailable
- the system can’t
- reflow text to varied screen sizes
- vary presentation (size, contrast)
- vary modality (audio, braille)
- accessibility
- lacks semantic structure (tags for titles, heading levels, sections, paragraphs, lists, emphasis, code, links, accessibility features, etc)
- some users can’t read this due to lack of alt text
- users can’t adapt the text for dyslexia or vision impairments
- systems can’t read the text to them or send it to braille devices
- web connectivity
- we have to do failure-prone bullshit to find the original source
- we can’t explore wider context of the original message
- authenticity: we don’t know the image hasn’t been tampered
- searchability: the “text” isn’t indexable by search engine in a meaningful way
- fault tolerance: no text fallback if
- image breaks
- image host is geoblocked due to insane regulations.
Contrary to age & humble appearance, text is an advanced technology that provides all these capabilities absent from images.
Nowhere in that discussion did the commenter deny being female so shame on OP for jumping to conclusions.
That’s the only context in which that comment makes sense.
Nope, any possibility make sense. The unnecessary prelude doesn’t imply anything: anyone of any gender including non-binary could write it.
Isn’t gender a social construct based on self-identification (rather than your physical body) that can be fluid & vary from day to day? Isn’t a woman anyone who claims to be?
Some activists even say there is no such thing as a “male body”
A penis is not a male body part. It’s just an unusual body part for a woman.
OP definitely jumped to conclusions. Unwise.
deleted by creator
- usability
Turns out, a community exclusive to some gender almost inevitably turns into a hate pool, exactly because the most common scenario in which they are needed is “let’s shit on someone and not let them defend themselves”.
Naturally, those excluded find a way to get into the conversation to stand up for themselves. When men come together to spread hateful takes on women, this naturally puts women in a position to defend, respond, and possibly retaliate. The same works the other way around.
And honestly - it’s how it should be. Those spreading hate and silencing all other voices should not be given platform for it. Let’s remain constructive and keep the conversation going. Division and hate hurts and ends up gross for everyone.
